The Lone Ranger
I would like to thank the authors of the two reviews for Gore Verbinski’s “The Lone Ranger” that I read before watching the film for their lowering of my expectations on the film. It allowed me to go into the film less certain of what to expect in terms of how I would feel, and as a result, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed what Verbinski and co. had in store for me.
Now, don’t get me wrong: this isn’t the same level of surprise I felt with Verbinski’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” ten years ago– that film remains a near-perfect piece of classical adventure filmmaking, infused with a punch-drunk modern sensibility best exemplified in Johnny Depp’s Oscar-nominated turn as Jack Sparrow; “The Lone Ranger,” featuring many of the same credits, is not that good. But while lightning fails to strike twice overall, believe me when I say that Verbinski, Depp, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and Armie Hammer as the titular character have plenty of summertime silliness with the material. (That being said, this isn’t quite the family adventure it’s been sold as, though. There’s some dark, PG-13 material here, parents.)
Gore Verbinski is probably one of the most underappreciated filmmakers in the business right now. Yes, he gave us two over-stuffed sequels to “Pirates” that pale compared to the original, but the rest of his filmmography is the textbook definition of cinematic imagination: from his 1998 debut, “Mouse Hunt” (a devious bit of family moviemaking) and 2001’s “The Mexican (as off-beat a star vehicle as Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts have ever had) to “The Ring” (one of the scariest modern horror films) and 2005’s criminally undervalued “The Weather Man” (with one of Nicolas Cage’s best performances) to his Oscar-winning animated film, “Rango,” Verbinski is not someone who likes doing the same thing twice, and when he does (in the case of the “Pirates” sequels), he doesn’t do them in quite the same way that he did before. In the case of “Ranger,” he may be working with much of the same creative crew that made the “Pirates” films, not to mention the Western sensibilities he and Deep explored in “Rango,” but this is definitely not a rehash of those earlier movies.
Instead, “The Lone Ranger” is a big, visually-beautiful Western epic, with images (courtesy of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli) that are some of the most beautiful the genre has seen since the glory days of John Ford and Sergio Leone, both of whom appear to have inspired Verbinski in his vision of this iconic tale. There are moments and beats that don’t really work– and almost all of them involve Depp’s Tonto –but by and large, this “Ranger” is a one well worth riding with.
The film begins with a young boy, dressed as the Lone Ranger (white hat, black mask), walking into an exhibit about the Old West in 1933 San Francisco. He comes across a display feature an old, Comanche Indian whom, it turns out, is actually the aged Tonto. (It sounds silly, but you just have to run with it.) This is the framing device that brings us into the world of the 1969 Old West, where John Reid (Hammer) is coming into a dusty town to be the local District Attorney. It’s not long, however, until Reid, whose brother is a local Ranger, is caught up in the case of Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), who is on the same train, along with Tonto. Cavendish is busted free by his band of renegades, And Reid rides out with his brother to capture them. Unfortunately, it’s an ambush, with everyone killed, and John Reid left for dead…until Tonto comes across him, and gives him a mission of justice, and a mask to wear. And, as they say, hi-yo Silver, away we’re off on an adventure.
After reading one of the reviews I mentioned at the outset, I was prepared for another one of Johnny Depp’s increasingly-annoying “oddball” performances as Tonto. However, I have to say that, while I still yearn for another “real” Depp performance (along the lines of “Finding Neverland” and “Ed Wood”), his Tonto was not the deal-breaker for me that I expected. Yes, the sight of him trying to feed that dead crow on his head got old pretty quick, but I felt like Depp and Verbinski, who seems to be bringing the best out of the actor right now, had something they wanted to say in their portrayal of Tonto. This isn’t just dressing Depp up in an outrageous costume and letting him loose, but I felt real emotion for this character: he has a purpose beyond the tics; a sense of loss he is trying to atone for; and a genuine affection that builds up for Reid that comes through as he’s telling the story to that kid in the exhibit. And, believe it or not, I didn’t feel like his presence dwarfed the straight-man appeal of Hammer’s Reid one bit, and they make an engaging pair of outcasts in this rollicking, big-budget adventure, which is bookended by two of the craziest runaway train sequences the genre’s ever seen, the latter of which owes more than a debt to Keaton’s great classic, “The General,” and solidifies Verbinski’s status not just as a first-class adventure director, but a total nerd when it comes to Western. Hopefully, he’ll get to indulge in that appreciation more in the years to come, because if “Rango” and “The Lone Ranger” are any indication, he’s got a lot left to explore, and just the imagination to do it with.
