Two schools of thought exist on movies: The first is that they are for entertainment purposes only; the second is that they are an art form that is being degraded by modern special effects and mindless blockbusters. And although I can’t quite side with either of these two extremes, The Lone Ranger might be the most convincing argument for the latter I’ve ever seen. This mindless, heartless, and utterly idiotic action movie features everything that modern audiences crave, from a weird Johnny Depp performance to trains being derailed and blowing up all over the place. Only a movie like this could be called a “commercial failure” with a box office of over 200 million dollars, as that amount (and then some) was clearly spent on production design and special effects. Disney has really been screwing this up lately, with this and the 2012 box office bomb John Carter. You’d think that with such exponential budgets, the quality would be better... but you’d think wrong.
The Lone Ranger also holds the distinction of being the first film I’ve seen where the main character takes second billing to his sidekick. This film stars Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger himself, not like anyone cares-- the only reason people saw this movie is for Johnny Depp’s performance as Tonto. And I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed his character a lot, probably because it’s a carbon-copy of Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Half the lines he said could have been repurposed lines from POTC, and some of his action moments were almost identical to those in his far more successful franchise. This isn’t too noticeable until the end, where Tonto rides a ladder over to another train and steps off it nonchalantly, in a scene that is eerily reminiscent of Sparrow’s entrance in The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Hammer, meanwhile, doesn’t even act in this movie. He’s a virtually unknown name “starring” in a movie alongside a very charismatic actor, and it totally throws off the balance of the film. If Disney had gotten someone like Chris Evans or Ed Norton in this role, the movie could have been a lot stronger, but Hammer’s character was so boring and obnoxious that I found myself looking forward to the action scenes. I actually had to skip one of his moments with an old girlfriend, because it was some of the most poorly-written crap I’ve ever been witness to. It also doesn’t help that Hammer sounds like a whiny little brat while talking to Tonto, constantly complaining about things and not knowing what’s going on. His character is given virtually no development past the typical “city boy out in the boonies” stereotype. It’s exhausting.
The plot is all over the map, as you could probably guess-- a ludicrous and hamstrung story about a man trying to gain a monopoly over the railway and killing whoever gets in his way. I don’t know why movies these days can’t just be fun and not have to bring some sort of dark and brooding aspect with them. But I guess that’s what happens when someone like Christopher Nolan is proven to be box office gold-- Other studios try to copy his style. So now we have an all-American icon who stands for something even MORE straightforward than truth and justice getting a twisty plot filled with evil characters and jarring violence. The film couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be dumb summer fun or a seriously rough movie about the plight of Native Americans and the Chinese in the West. As a result, of course, it was neither.
It’s shot weird, too. Every scene is in a cross between sepia tone and black-and-white. I’m not saying a movie has to be colorful and explosive, but wow, when you spend your entire budget on special effects, why not make it a little easier on the eyes? This really bad camera technique is another clear attempt to make the movie feel dark and brooding, which makes no sense when put in the context of the things we see onscreen. No matter how Nolan-y you film this shit, nobody is going to take a woman with a shotgun in her peg leg seriously. The elevator pitch for this movie was basically “We’re going to remake Wild Wild West, but with slightly better dialogue and weird camerawork.” And Disney bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
However, I would be lying if I said that this thing didn’t give me a good time. I have finals this week, and this was just what I needed-- an exciting and action-packed distraction from the mundane shit of real life. I laughed over several of Depp’s one-liners (“Nature is indeed out of balance”), and I grinned and shook my head over the cartoonish excess of the action. The stunts are very well-choreographed, and the action moves with the beat of the music, which happens to be the William Tell Overture, one of the best pieces ever written. In the final sequence, you have to decide whether to actually care about whether the movie is good or bad, or just have a good time. I shut off my brain, sat back and enjoyed... and it was glorious.
Final Score for The Lone Ranger: 3/10 stars. This is an okay movie to watch as a timewaster, but as a whole, it never quite coheres. The acting is inconsistent, and even Depp seems to be phoning it in most of the time. The camerawork is shoddy, the tone is all over the place, and the dialogue is shit. Not to mention the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer was involved in this movie, which nine times out of ten will bring the movie’s score down considerably. 2013 has been a good year for action junkies, and I must say that I’ve enjoyed several of these summer blockbusters for the retarded shit they are (Kick-Ass 2 and Pacific Rim come to mind)... but I don’t feel comfortable giving out a higher score to a movie with so many glaring defects. Let’s be honest: This movie sucked.
BUT I CAN’T WAIT FOR A SEQUEL!
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