Gore
Verbinski’s reboot of the Depression era radio and baby boom television Western
hero enters a world of tall tales and strange myths. The Lone Ranger delivers all the energy moviegoers have come to
expect from a hectic Jerry Bruckheimer super-mega production, and only mild
bouts of mindlessness cheapen this imaginative and bold film.
Extravagant,
excessive, and intermittently exhausting, the vaguely revisionist, reinvigorated
origin story stars the handsome but bland Armie Hammer of The Social Network as the titular masked hero, proving, as Orlando
Bloom did in Verbinski’s Pirates of the
Caribbean that the main character can be the least compelling personality
onscreen; in many ways, the director just took that hugely successful franchise
and put it in a saddle.
An
almost unrecognizable Johnny Depp—at least until he opens his mouth or makes the
sort of flamboyant gesture any Captain Jack Sparrow fan knows and loves—gets
top billing as Hollywood’s most iconic Injun. An outcast isolated from both his
tribe and the white world, Tonto has his own reasons for riding alongside the
masked avenger. He is no longer just a sidekick, but a mentor and the reason
the movie works to the extent that it does. Heavily face-painted and sporting a
dead-crow tiara he sometimes tries to feed—maybe someone should have told him
that bird in Kirby Sattler’s paining “I Am Crow” was just flying in the
background—Depp, like the film, mixes gravity and goofiness.
