Ryan McNeil
THE LONE RANGER begins with a scene that features a young boy. The boy wanders a carnival unattended, and is dressed like a cowboy – complete with white hat and black mask. That boy is something of a relic now, given that we have reached an age where children don’t pretend to be cowboys anymore. But not that long ago, many children did. They pretended to be cowboys and cowgirls, they stopped pretend banks from being robbed by pretend crooks, and rode away into the sunset on pretend horses.
This is a film that wants its audience to remember that feeling, and maybe even instill that feeling in children who never played cowboys.
The story begins with a locomotive making its way to Colby, Texas. This train carries three of the main players of our two hours’ traffic. Kept captive in irons is Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner); an outlaw going to Texas to be tried (and presumably hanged) for his crimes. Sitting next to him, also in irons, is Tonto (Johnny Depp) a Comanche whose only crime seems to be having been born native. Back in the passenger car is John Reid (Armie Hammer), a lawyer headed to Colby to become its district attorney.
However, just before the train arrives at the station, all hell breaks loose. Cavendish breaks his bonds, kills his captors, unwittingly frees Tonto, and has the train sail right through the station. This leads to a spectacular crash at the end of the not-yet-completed tracks, setting Cavendish free to join his gang, turning Tonto loose, and sending Reid back to Colby to join his older brother (A Texas Ranger) to bring Cavendish back to justice.
The raid is wildly unsuccessful, costing the full posse of seven men (including both Reid brothers their lives).
However, as Tonto happens upon the carnage and begins to bury the bodies, a surprise is in store. John Reid’s body is approached by a white Spirit Horse, and he ultimately cheats death and comes-to. When Reid comes to grips with his strange resurrection, he implores Tonto’s help to brings his brother’s killer to justice.
The quest will take them all across the Texan territory, and comes with the hopes that Reid’s nephew and widowed sister-in-law (Ruth Wilson) can be kept out of harm’s way. Their quest will also have to work around progress being made by the railroad and its chairman Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson). He has pledged to honour The Comanche and respect their territory, so long as all peace treaties are held.
THE LONE RANGER is the sort of film built to give audiences at good time at the movies. It wants to take us to other worlds, delight us with thrilling action and elaborate stunts, and inevitably give ourselves over to the sort of story that delighted us as children. Happily, the film manages to do just that with a wild opening and a thrilling conclusion. Not-so-happily, those two set pieces are separated by a vast swath of middle. That middle is not delightful, thrilling, or anything resembling a good time.
In that desolate middle, the plot pulls over to the side of the road over and over. It takes us to various towns, settlements, camps, and valleys. Each time it waves its arms at the horizon, and grins as if to say “Pretty neat, huh?”…but none of them are. These places, these faces, and the hijinks they provoke are all deeply forgettable. None of these situations do very much to develop the buddy-cop bond between Reid and Tonto. What’s worse, because we keep stopping to spend time with them, we lose any sort of forward-momentum. Undeterred, the film keeps pulling the car over to show us more things we don’t much need to see.
To paraphrase another Johnny Depp film, this film suffers from having too much muchness.
Speaking of Depp, much has been made about his portrayal of Tonto and the racism it hovers over. While I won’t speak to whether the casting and portrayal is or isn’t racist, what I will say is that I often felt uncomfortable with Tonto outside of the action scenes. Much of it stems from his dialogue delivery which never felt natural even though everyone else around him was playing things pretty straight. Sometimes, when the movie wanted to score a laugh or two, Tonto would drop a line in hammy, broken english (“Make trade”). In a film like THE LONE RANGER, I need to be able to completely give myself over to my imagination. Depp’s performance kept tapping a particular note on the keyboard that snapped me back to reality with its inappropriateness.
Making Depp’s Tonto all the more perplexing is the framing device through which the story is told. We’re led to believe that the whole thing is being recounted by Tonto as an older man, but the logic of where he is and what he’s doing is deeply perplexing. He’s not on a stage, he’s not working a crowd – he’s part of a diorama, something like an animal in a zoo. Let’s put aside the fact that retelling a whole story as a memory can sometimes feel false. Retelling it all to some stranger from within a diorama feels flat-out wrong. It underscored my discomfort with Depp’s Tonto and made it that much more difficult to “go with it”.
If Depp’s Tonto were the only problem, I might still be able to consider the film a flawed source of amusement. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s not the only hindrance THE LONE RANGER needs to shake. Another problem that handcuffs the movie is that a film like this deserves a charismatic villain, especially since there are only so many motives in a western to give its villain. Even though this film ultimately gives us two villains to choose from, neither one of them seem capable of twirling a moustache with the right amount of zeal. What makes this especially peculiar is the fact that both of the actors cast as this film’s villains are great at playing things big and dastardly. Why in the world the filmmakers decided to keep them on a leash is beyond me.
As the final set piece begins, the trumpets blare out the William tell Overture, and the camera pans to a hero shot of Reid on his white horse. In that moment, the entire audience smiles. We remember The Lone Ranger that we pretended to be as children, and even remember singing those notes with great joy. In that moment, we are that boy in San Francisco. In that moment, the film is doing everything right – and in many of the moments that follow it. The problem is that it took too long to get there.
The meal wasn’t worth the mess, and the destination wasn’t worth the journey.
I’m sad to see the scores of low scores this film is getting. But I can’t say I’m that surprised…
I did a guest-spot on a podcast this week where I made mention of this. In a way, I feel like this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. People avoided it because they believed it was going to suck, and then when its box office was abysmal they pointed to it and said “See: Told ya it was gonna suck.”
Oh well – for what it’s worth, I was hoping to enjoy it.
Ouch! Another scathing review, but you made a lot of great points I haven’t read before. Ah well, so I don’t feel so bad that I missed the screening then.
“…this film ultimately gives us two villains to choose from, neither one of them seem capable of twirling a moustache with the right amount of zeal.” Ahah, GREAT line, Ryan.
Knowing how many great films your fair city has to offer, settling in for more than 2.5 hours of RANGER would be a really big waste of time.