In a desperate attempt to remain relevant, director Gore
Verbinski and actor Johnny Depp, the creative team responsible for the first
three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, have reteamed for this summer’s “The
Lone Ranger”. With the financial assistance
of Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer, they have managed again to cobble together a
scattershot script and pile enough money towards the special effects to create
another bloated, high budget, overlong Looney Tunes episode, masquerading as a
period piece.
Based
on an old radio serial, turned television show, “The Lone Ranger” tells the
story of a young lawyer in the 1860s’ named John Reid (Armie Hammer) who comes
back to his Texas hometown, where his sheriff brother is trying to hunt down
and imprison a deranged cannibal outlaw by the name of Butch Cavendish (William
Fichtner).
While joining
their search to prove his masculinity, Reid is gunned down and left for dead as
his brother and the rest of his deputies get sniped from the canyons by
Cavendish and his band of cross-dressing companions. Later he awakes to find
himself bootless, under the supervision of a rogue Apache mystic named Tonto
(Johnny Depp). Together they try to find Cavendish, as Reid, still believed to
be dead, takes on the identity of a phantom enforcer called The Lone Ranger.
Stuffed
between the seams of this fairly straight forward revenge-western, the writers
have decided to include a swell of half-thoughts, side-plots and other
narrative digressions. These include; Helena Bonham Carter as a one-legged
prostitute, a corrupt politician with plans to incite a war with the Apache by
redirecting the newly built railway, for the purpose of covertly stealing their
un-mined Silver, as well as a bunch of nonsense about evil spirits, lucky
bullets and a magic horse.
Verbinski
isn’t an altogether untalented director but he is oftentimes an undisciplined
one. When it comes to how to direct and
design an action scene he has a specific talent for creating exuberant,
complicated, Rube-Goldberg like set-pieces that are creative and fun to watch—even
when they go on and on and on. When it comes to narrative, at least with this
film and his other Disney associated projects, he treats plot like a hungry kid
at a family buffet, who keeps piling things on his plate without realizing that
there‘s no way to eat everything without getting sick.
Even
stickier is this film’s clumsy attempts at progressive racial inclusiveness.
It’s no surprise that Johnny Depp’s Tonto eventually hijacks the
spotlight. To clarify his motivations, many
threads in the story have to do with the violation of the Native Americans due
to westward expansion. I don’t fault the film for trying to add some purpose to
the pulp, but this gesture lost its thematic legs as soon as a famous white actor
was cast to play an American Indian. Though probably not on purpose, Depp’s
performance as is so broad that it starts to edge squeamishly close to “Peter
Pan” levels of offensive stereotypes.
Armie
Hammer on the other hand, proves himself to be a worthy leading man, despite
the fact that his character gets sidelined for much of the film.
This is
an unabashedly commercial piece of fluff that was only produced because
everyone involved wanted to keep making their Pirates money. But because audiences have been sequeled to
death by that franchise, they gave it a dusty, de-saturated, western makeover
and tied it in with a wildly outdated brand from a time well before their
target demographic was born. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s alarmingly dark
and too violent (did I mention this movie features cannibalism?), and sometimes
it’s far too campy for its own good. But it’s definitely way too long.
So if
you can wade through all of its needless asides, awkward tonal shifts, and an embarrassing,
misguided performance from Depp, then I guess you could do worse than the “The
Lone Ranger”; a well-meaning but ultimately meaningless summer distraction.
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2013
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