Little late to the party on this one, I accept, but maybe the TV experience will be slightly kinder than the harsh glare of the cinema screen on this notorious flop from a few years back. The answer.... not really. It's still an overlong, vaguely racist, horribly predictable, second rate action-adventure.
Armie Hammer plays John Reid a pacifist district attorney who joins his brother's posse to help track down notorious murdered Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) and his gang. When the posse is betrayed, Reid's brother is killed and he is left for dead. He's restored by Silver, a Native American spirit horse and Tonto (Johnny Depp) who then forms a reluctant partnership with Reid and in going after Cavendish, they discover a larger conspiracy.
There are a couple of reasons why "The Lone Ranger" doesn't really work. Much of the blame was landed at Johnny Depp's feet, as this was right around the time opinion turned on him and to be fair, much of that here is justified. Though spending some of the running time in awful "old man" make up doesn't help, the film never really settles on who "Tonto" is. At times he's possessing "native" insight and wisdom, at others he blunders around taking pratfalls and "feeding" the dead crow on his head, sadly, most of the time, he's just irritating.
But those tonal problems roll out to the rest of the film too. It veers wildly between high farce and mild horror. Various scenes of slaughtered Indian Villages, and of Cavendish removing and eating Reid's brother's heart don't mesh well with the ladder riding pratfalls of the films climactic scenes. There are odd character choices too, such as the decision to make Reid in love with his brother's wife. . as if somehow he wouldn't be as motivated to save his brothers widow and his nephew if he wasn't also in in love with her. The reveal of the extra villain at the end was very underwhelming, if you can't work it out from the names on the poster, then you really haven't seen enough movies.
The final action scene is a really good one, with a train split into several carriages that then traverses numerous crossing tracks that are (inexplicably) all going in the same direction, but unfortunately it's too little, too late, to justify the horrendous running time.
Armie Hammer plays John Reid a pacifist district attorney who joins his brother's posse to help track down notorious murdered Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) and his gang. When the posse is betrayed, Reid's brother is killed and he is left for dead. He's restored by Silver, a Native American spirit horse and Tonto (Johnny Depp) who then forms a reluctant partnership with Reid and in going after Cavendish, they discover a larger conspiracy.
There are a couple of reasons why "The Lone Ranger" doesn't really work. Much of the blame was landed at Johnny Depp's feet, as this was right around the time opinion turned on him and to be fair, much of that here is justified. Though spending some of the running time in awful "old man" make up doesn't help, the film never really settles on who "Tonto" is. At times he's possessing "native" insight and wisdom, at others he blunders around taking pratfalls and "feeding" the dead crow on his head, sadly, most of the time, he's just irritating.
But those tonal problems roll out to the rest of the film too. It veers wildly between high farce and mild horror. Various scenes of slaughtered Indian Villages, and of Cavendish removing and eating Reid's brother's heart don't mesh well with the ladder riding pratfalls of the films climactic scenes. There are odd character choices too, such as the decision to make Reid in love with his brother's wife. . as if somehow he wouldn't be as motivated to save his brothers widow and his nephew if he wasn't also in in love with her. The reveal of the extra villain at the end was very underwhelming, if you can't work it out from the names on the poster, then you really haven't seen enough movies.
The final action scene is a really good one, with a train split into several carriages that then traverses numerous crossing tracks that are (inexplicably) all going in the same direction, but unfortunately it's too little, too late, to justify the horrendous running time.