Nobody expected Pirates
of the Caribbean to be a hit. It was a movie based on a ride at Disneyland.
The star, Johnny Depp, was a respected actor, but not a box office draw. Plus,
the last pirate movie to hit screens was the abysmal Cutthroat Island, a notorious flop that hastened the demise of
Carolco, the production company responsible for Terminator 2 and Basic
Instinct. Pirates was not only a
triumph, it spawned one of the biggest money making franchises in movie
history. Each of the three sequels is ranked in the top 20 of highest worldwide
grosses, plus Depp received an Oscar nomination for his memorable portrayal of
Capt. Jack Sparrow.
While Hollywood has produced several quality Westerns over
the last several years (3:10 to Yuma,
Django Unchained), it wasn't a genre
considered to be a huge attraction. Disney was looking to change that
perception with The Lone Ranger. They
put the Pirates band back together
including Depp, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Gore Verbinski, composer
Hans Zimmer, and screenwriters Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio (with a rewrite by
Justin Haythe).
The Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick, Tonto, debuted on
a 1933 radio drama, but his most popular incarnation is the ABC television
series that aired from 1949 to 1957 with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels in
the lead roles. The least popular version would have to be The Legend of the Lone Ranger, a live-action film released in 1981
to capitalize on the success of the Superman
movies. Legend was a critical and
commercial failure and immediately sank the career of its star, Klinton
Spilsbury, who never acted again. Spilsbury was no Christopher Reeve. He upset
many crewmembers with his egotistical behavior, his drinking, and a mediocre
performance that led producers to dub over his voice. Disney's Lone Ranger was also plagued with
production woes. Filming was delayed due to the studio wanting to trim the
bloated budget of $225 million. They cut it down to a mere $200 million. Not
that it mattered because the picture wound up spending the difference and then
some. Remember when Westerns didn't cost the GNP of a small country because all
you needed was a horse, a desert, and a guy with a gun?
John Reid (Armie Hammer) returns to his dusty hometown of
Colby, Texas after studying law back east. His brother, Dan (James Badge Dale),
is a member of the Texas Rangers and Colby's primary lawman and is married to
John's former girlfriend, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson). Progress is about to transform
Colby into a vital hub thanks to the construction of the Transcontinental
Railroad overseen by tycoon Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson). The Reids and a team
of Rangers set out into the desert to capture a recently escaped outlaw named
Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner). An ambush by Cavendish and his gang leaves
everyone dead, except for John who is rescued by Tonto (Depp), a Comanche on
his own mission of vengeance.
Anything unique Verbinski and Depp had to say about the
Western, they told it all in the delightfully quirky Rango. The Lone Ranger is
painfully formulaic in spite of Verbinski quoting from the works of John Ford
and Sergio Leone. He even throws in a visual reference to The Flight of the Red Balloon. The beautiful shots of Monument
Valley aren't nearly enough to distract from a bloated runtime of nearly two
and a half hours. Borrowing from Little
Big Man, Verbinski employs a framing device in which an elderly Tonto,
posing as a mannequin in a traveling sideshow, recounts his tale to a young
boy. These sequences are one of many that attempt to deal with America's bloody
history and the indignant treatment of Native Americans, along with Chinese
rail workers. However, the movie never digs deeper into those topics because it
is a Disney movie. Thus, we get a brutal scene where a Comanche tribe is
massacred by machine gun fire that is completely undercut by Laurel &
Hardy-style slapstick involving the Ranger and Tonto on a seesaw cart. There's
no payoff to the sideshow scenes either. Too bad Sony has the rights to the
Green Hornet, otherwise the kid could have been revealed to be Britt Reid, the
Hornet's alter-ego and Dan's grand-nephew.
The tonal inconsistencies are a major problem beyond the
failed blend of violence and humor. Throughout the picture, the Ranger is a
source of derision in spite of the studio's desire to make him into a modern,
bad-ass character. There's a constant mocking of the Ranger iconography with
people asking, "What's with the mask," as a bad running joke. When
the Ranger shouts his catchphrase, "Hi-yo, Silver! Away!," Tonto
emphatically tells him to never do it again.
The Lone Ranger falls
into the same trap of many origin stories in that the protagonist doesn't
become the hero we know until the end. The final act is the best part of the
movie with a pair of runaway trains on parallel tracks. It's the same type of
outlandish set piece that the Pirates
series did so well. The film is almost invigorated when the Ranger's theme, the
William Tell Overture, finally kicks in and the masked man rides to the rescue
of Rebecca, who is in full Perils of
Pauline mode.
Although the movie is entitled, The Lone Ranger, Johnny Depp's Tonto is the obvious star. Depp
tries to recapture the magic of Jack Sparrow with another idiosyncratic
performance, but there isn't anything particularly memorable about his Tonto.
The same goes for Armie Hammer, who was great in The Social Network, but is given nothing but the blandest material
to work with. As brothel owner, Red Harrington, Helena Bonham Carter seems to
have wandered off a Tim Burton set and is more than welcome though she could have
been easily cut.
The Lone Ranger is
an indulgent mess that failed to achieve a fraction of the success of the first
Pirates movie. In the end, it will go
down as another costly failure for Disney alongside Mars Needs Moms and John Carter.
Rating: * ½ (*****)
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