No, there’s nearly two hours of lumbering weirdness to follow before the film finally pays off on that promise (but stick with it, and pay off it does…) The familiar William Tell Overture builds on the soundtrack, and then, just as it reaches the crescendo…it stops dead in its tracks. He jumps right into the story, with the Lone Ranger and Tonto leaping into action.
It’s the first of many, many subplots, story threads, and general asides that could have been excised to make this bloated 2.5-hour flick a rollicking 100-minute adventure. Opening in 1933 San Francisco, Ranger is narrated via flashback by Depp’s Tonto (in some of the better old-age makeup I’ve seen), telling his story to a young masked boy at an Old West exhibit. Armie Hammer (in his first big starring role, after portraying the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) makes for an agreeably genteel lead his goofy, good-natured charm recalls something like Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent, and results in a perfect reluctant hero, the kind of protagonist they just don’t make any more.Īt the very least, he’s a far stronger presence than either Orlando Bloom or Kiera Knightley in the Pirates films, and the best Lone Ranger since Clayton Moore (not that there’s been much competition, apologies to Klinton Spilsbury). Surprisingly, perhaps, it’s actually the Lone Ranger who manages to wrestle his own film away from Depp. But unlike the wildly flamboyant Jack Sparrow, Depp completely underplays the role his Buster Keaton-esque deadpan reactions result in some of the film’s best gags. Indeed, Depp’s Tonto is the iconic image in the film: his face painted white with black stripes and a dead crow mounted atop his head (inspired by Kirby Sattler’s painting I Am Crow), the character is magnetic whenever onscreen, and overtakes the iconic but familiar appearance of the Ranger. It may be my fondness for the genre, but I enjoyed this a little more than the Pirates films, with the possible exception of some of the more out-there stuff in Dead Man’s Chest. In other words, it’s a western variation of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, which is no surprise given the studio and team behind it: Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer producing, Verbinski directing, and Johnny Depp (as Tonto) in a supporting role so over-the-top strange he threatens to overtake the movie. That’s no small feat given the previous two hours of the film, which have major story and pacing issues and survive mostly via droll comedy, obscure references, and general weirdness. By the time the William Tell Overture kicks in during the big climactic action sequence, Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger had just about won me over.
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