The Lone Ranger

Director Gore Verbinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer got a bee in their bonnet about The Lone Ranger. Their beef was that the film was savaged by critics due to what happened behind the scenes as opposed to the actual quality of the film. Do they have a point though? The Lone Ranger is certainly no classic, but it’s a long way off from being a turkey. Where it was a disaster was on the commercial front, but as I’ve been saying for years, most of the time a films performance at the box office has little connection to it’s overall merit. The Lone Ranger is a bit of a muddle no doubt, but at least it tries to entertain as much as possible. The chemistry between Depp (Tonto) and Hammer (Guess) is decent, there are a number of laughs and it doesn’t take itself seriously at any point. Plus if you don’t like seeing William Fichtner (as the big bad here), then you plain just don’t like cinema. However, the cast and crew can have no argument against the negatives. The flashback structure is completely unnecessary and unfunny (the present day bits are Depp as an elderly man narrating the story) and add too many minutes onto an already lengthy run time. The tone is all over the place (it’s oddly brutal at times) and the never ending final scene is the overkill that has been hinted at all along. Perhaps the main question that needs to be answered is when did Johnny Depp decide to stop acting? It can’t be helped that he’s teaming up with Verbinski yet again, but this is just the same old routine he’s been putting out for almost a decade now in films of this ilk and its wearing very thin indeed. Going back to the original complaint, there is also the counter argument that many films suffer from teething difficulties in production and turn out to be fine in the long run. Personally, it seems to me that this just isn’t a film that has an audience out there (something I would have thought Disney would have researched beforehand). The last actual film to star these characters was over thirty years ago and whilst many of the production crew may be from that generation, the cinema going demographic is mainly between 25-35 year olds and they’re clearly non-plussed by a man in a mask on his horse with an eccentric sidekick. Overall, if you disengage brain you should have enough fun to get by (plus Tom Wilkinson accent spotters are well catered for), but Bruckheimer’s assertion that in years to come this will be rediscovered as a masterpiece is as fanciful as this getting a sequel. Rating: 6/10.