Review of The Lone Ranger (2013) by Neocomp92 — 12 Jul 2013

The Lone Ranger effectively made me felt something I have not felt for some time: that awful feeling of having sunk in money to buy tickets to an otherwise lackluster film.

Johnny Depp here was (supposedly) a secondary character to Hammer's protagonist role, but it seems that the director felt that the film should receive the Pirates charm, and asked him to bring Jack Sparrow front and center in his portrayal. As a result you get all the mannerisms of Sparrow sans the eloquence of the British pirate; the familiar behavior of doing random things as part of a larger plan afoot, the manipulation of people around him for his own goals, the oddities of being mad but secretly brilliant. It made audiences laugh, but this isn't Pirates. The comedy in both Pirates and here was supposed to be icing on the cake, but here the icing covered the cake and pretentiously tried to pass on as the cake itself. Depp was supposed to be background, complementing not overshadowing Hammer.

Hammer on the other hand, gave a decent portrayal, if somewhat limited by the screenwriter's need to put Depp front and center, and the movie's generally bumpy efforts in presenting a story. The movie could be summed up in two themes: Upholding justice by the book vs. vigilantism, and revenge or redemption for past sins. Straightforward themes that writers surprisingly took their time milking out to the detriment of pacing and boring audiences badly. When you do get to some of the fleshy part of the story, its actually quite shallow, piecemeal and sometimes outright nonsensical.

This poor pacing issue even infected the action scenes. Never have I seen action scenes so boring despite the amount of napalm being thrown around. And that's because before any scene begins. there isn't a lot of tension being twisted to set up for the scene. When it plays, there is no discernible story to be told, no underlying struggle or emotion that the director is trying to show here. All it serves is to show off Jack Sparrow in a Western setting, coupled with that freakish white horse, and John Reid's awkward efforts of delivering civilised justice, followed by improbable aiming skills with a single shot. In short, the scenes were alien, not even trying to be integral to the story.

One good thing that should be noted was the chemistry between the leading duo. You get the sense of both characters representing what the underlying themes are, and the struggles of being an effective duo here is played somewhat decently, if not sometimes mired by the and giggles that were sometimes too distracting.

The use of flashback and unreliable narrator tropes here actually serves no purpose in the movie at all. The point of using them here was to supposedly show off Tonto's supernatural abilities, that certain missing parts of the story were actually out of divine/supernatural origins. Quite distracting, and frankly a waste of time that could have been used to flesh out a bit more back story, like that of John Reid and that forgettable damsel-in-distress character, which was placed there as a stereotypical damsel-in-distress given how shallow her characterisation was.

In short, if you enjoy turning off your brain at the door of the theater walking in, or you like to see Depp as Jack Sparrow in a Western, or indulge in occasional nonsensical slapstick comedy mixed with average action scenes, go ahead and watch, Otherwise save up your money for more decent films, or at least rent this movie if you're so tempted to watch, coz really, I don't want to even recommend it as a matinee.