I’ve always been a huge fan of The Lone Ranger and grew up watching the old Clayton Moore TV show. I’m one of the few (very few, apparently) that enjoyed the 1981 Legend of the Lone Ranger. He was the first vigilante that I ever related to; like the Punisher or Batman of the old west, a guy in a mask that rode around and righted wrongs and stopped bad guys with the aid of his lifelong friend and partner, Tonto. What kid couldn’t get behind a great character like that?
Now Disney hopes that a new generation of kids will enjoy The Lone Ranger character and they have reunited the director, writers, and star behind the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to bring the masked rider back to the silver screen. Does this great iconic character get the treatment he deserves? Does Disney strike gold yet again?
No. Disney’s The Lone Ranger is a misfire in almost every way.
The film starts with Johnny Depp taking one of the most noble, honorable, Native American characters ever created and turning him into a slapstick cartoon. We get a John Reid/Lone Ranger, played by Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as an inept, reluctant, bumbling joke of a “lawman” (he’s a deputy prosecutor, and is only sworn in as a ranger because the REAL lawmen needed an extra set of hands) who refuses to hold a gun and is the butt of more than one running gag throughout the 149-minute run time. These characters get to play in a grossly convoluted story involving hidden silver mines, broken treaties with the Comanche Indians, and the trans-continental railroad.
The Lone Ranger opens in 1930s San Francisco at a carnival. A peanut-crunching kid wearing a mask, hat and boots takes in an exhibit about the Wild West. On the exhibit, there are stuffed bears, a buffalo, and a “Nobel Savage” in the guise of a geriatric Native American statue. The statue comes to life and proclaims to be Tonto and then he proceeds to tell the young boy the story of the Lone Ranger.
Next we go back in time to 1869 and we meet John Reid (Hammer) coming home to Colby, Texas to reunite with his family; brother Dan (James Badge Dale), sister-in-law Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and nephew Danny (Bryant Prince). The train he is on is also carrying Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), a despicable outlaw, Indian killer and cannibal that is being brought to Colby for execution. Chained next to Cavendish in the prison car is Tonto (Depp) for reasons that are never really explained.
Cavendish’s crew stages a daring train rescue to free their leader, and Tonto and John Reid are introduced to one another. After surviving the train wreck, John Reid re-apprehends Tonto and takes him back to jail. Once back in Colby, Texas Ranger Dan Reid (Badge Dale) organizes a posse to hunt down and find Cavendish and John, who is deeply in love with his brother’s wife, comes along to assist to show off to her. The posse is ambushed and everyone is killed. Along comes Tonto, who inexplicably escaped the jail cell in Colby, who finds John’s body and with the help of a magic white horse, brings him back to life to seek out vengeance; not only for the fallen rangers, but for Tonto’s people who were wiped out years ago in a bad deal involving a silver cache in the mountains of Texas.
What follows is a bunch of western cliches and some actual good ideas by writers Justin Haythe (based off his screen story), Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the latter from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Unfortunately, these guys refuse to self edit and therefore every idea they come up with ends up on the screen, whether it be a tired, overdone trope or a decent idea that is never fully realized.
The inability to say “no” to the writing corps falls to either director Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates franchise) or producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates, Top Gun, CSI), and neither do their job. The long, bloated, sometimes boring script is shot into a long, bloated, sometimes boring film. With every idea imaginable filmed, casting has to fill the roles, and throw-a-ways like Helena Bonham Carter’s Madame, Red Harrington, and Barry Pepper’s Captain Fuller are useless in their roles.
Bonham Carter is especially wasted here with no purpose whatsoever, other than to shoot a barrel to cause an explosion late in the film. In fact, I could barely make out any of her dialogue, and I’m not sure it was theater’s sound system. Barry Pepper has turned in some outstanding work in his career, but when given absolutely zero to work with here, he’s little more than window dressing, especially if that window looks like General George Custer.
Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, The Patriot) is cast as a businessman named Cole who is a friend of the Reids, and who also works for the railroad barons building their rail line across the nation. He is given some meat to chew on in his role, but ultimately his performance suffers as he’s weighed down with too much of the story late in the third act.
The Lone Ranger is directed with the usual flash and flair by Gore Verbinski, but unfortunately the script was terrible from the get-go and any hopes of turning this into a Pirates-like crowd pleaser died along with the crow strapped to Depp’s Tonto’s head.
The Lone Ranger fails because the filmmakers and writers failed to capture who or what John Reid and The Lone Ranger truly is. He’s an ideal and a champion, and slapstick comedy and running jokes about Tonto feeding his dead bird constantly throughout the film, or ancillary characters questioning why Reid is wearing a mask takes away what the Lone Ranger means, not only to me, but to the generations before me that grew up watching and even listening to his adventures on the radio. If you are going to bring a classic character to a new generation, bring that character, and not a shadow — in this case, a comedic shadow — of what makes that character beloved in the first place.
Some people will enjoy this film, and maybe a new generation will grab hold of the legend that is the Lone Ranger. But Armie Hammer — whom I greatly respect as an actor — failed to create a character that will live long enough to generate his own legend. All involved have taken a great character, a great idea and soiled it trying to mine for comedy gold. For that, Disney’s The Lone Ranger fails to connect and all that is mined is crap.
The Lone Ranger is rated PG-13 and opened in theaters everywhere on July 3, 2013. You can already pre-order The Lone Ranger on Blu-ray and DVD at Amazon.com.
