Skip to main content

Movie: The Lone Ranger (2013)

I was all ready to give The Lone Ranger the benefit of the doubt after it was widely panned by, seemingly, almost everyone as a bad film (it was for that reason I didn't rush to see it in a cinema and am only just seeing it now on VOD) but I do agree it has its problems.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead!

I'm not going to go so far as to say it's a bad movie. There is so much to like about it. It contains some great, escapist action (highly improbable but awesome to see), some good humor, I liked Johnny Depp as Tonto and even Armie Hammer was a good choice for The Lone Ranger. My problem is that right from the beginning it seems somewhat confused and muddled.

The plot can be described fairly simply. It's the Lone Ranger's origin story. How could you muddle and confuse that? By opening the movie in 1930's with a young boy, dressed as the Lone Ranger, talking to a museum exhibit of a very old Tonto (supposedly a manikin or wax dummy that comes to life) who then goes on to relate the story of John Reid A.K.A. the Lone Ranger. A story set in 1869.

Sure it says something about how kids have always been fascinated by the legend of the Lone Ranger (I certainly was growing up) but the film doesn't do anything with it. There's no great revelation in the 1930's about anything we've just seen at the end of the film. The story just ends. You could take that whole section out and not miss it at all.

The only reason I can see for it is that it allows the story to jump around. I don't think it ever goes out of sequence but it does allow the film to fast forward past things that may have bogged the movie down.

It also helps to explain a pretty magical white horse turning up in some pretty improbable situations and moments. For example, the horse just randomly shows up on top of a barn roof. The barn is on fire and has a two or three gunmen out side watching to shoot anyone that might come out. The obvious thing to do is climb to the barn roof where you're surprised to see your horse waiting to help make your getaway.

Highly improbable but if you recall, you're watching a story that is being retold to a young, impressionable boy. Such an improbable situation as a horse turning up on the roof of a barn is likely to be the artistic embellishment of the story teller.

Having said that, the weird white horse turning up in odd places is actually a highlight of the film that nearly upstages Johnny Depp's understated but still quirky Tonto.

I can't really fault Depp's performance as Tonto, other than to say I was expecting a character a little more outrageous, more along the lines of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Unlike the Pirates movies, I suspect Depp and the film makers were conscious of the cultural sensitivities of Depp playing a native American and didn't want to make the character too eccentric. (Some people seemed to find it offensive and weren't buying Depp's links to native American people as proper justification for not hiring an actual native American actor)

Armie Hammer, on the other hand, did look the part of the Lone Ranger but the script he had to work with really didn't make him as likeable as he needed to be. He started off well, as a very straight down the line lawyer type who believes in the judicial process, however he never really veers too far from that ideal.

By the end of the film John Reid is still John Reid the naive and somewhat annoying lawyer rather than a more weathered and experienced Lone Ranger. We never really get inside his head or get the urge to dig deeper into his psyche.

It's a shame because I did think Armie was good with what he had to work with and his character should have been the focus of the film despite Depp being the bigger star. In contrast, just about everyone in Man of Steel was a bigger star than Henry Cavill but that film was still all about his character and he was on all the posters. Depp fans would have seen the Lone Ranger whether he was the focus of the marketing or not.

Those were my main issues with the film. The way it was told meant there was quite a bit of time between each set action piece, which would have been fine, but the character moments didn't do enough to get you invested in any of them, other than Tonto.

Things like John Reid waking up on top of an enormous wooden scaffolding, on top of an almost impossible to access peak, looked great in the trailer but was only onscreen momentarily in the film with no explanation. Not even how he got up there nor how he got down.

A better edit of the film, minus all the story telling scenes by the older Tonto, could really lift this film in my opinion. It had all the elements to be a fast paced western with Indiana Jones type action and they bogged it down with unnecessary exposition that could have been replaced with scenes to help us relate more to the main character.

The Lone Ranger is certainly worth your time. It's definitely not as bad as you've been lead to believe. However it could have been so much better and definitely had more of a chance for multiple movies.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Movie Review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) *No Spoilers*

T his is another film that I would have liked to have seen in a theatre but, for whatever reason, didn't get to. Having now seen  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga  (2024) almost a year later I'm glad I didn't. Which is not to say it's bad. Like its predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which I enjoyed in a cinema immensely, this film would definitely benefit from being on a big screen for the spectacle and epic visuals of it all.  However unlike its predecessor there is so much going on, with back and forth between the waring parties, and Furiosa's story as well, you can't just sit back and kind of enjoy the ride. It's like writer/director, George Miller, wanted to cram in as many of his ideas as possible for the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max, because it's not likely he'll make another one, but whoever does, has a rich, detailed world of on screen source material to draw upon. The story begins with young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and her journey from the ...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress

TET, Episode 5 Heelflip attempt. C ontinuing my ten part series of Second Sunday Skateboard sessions , the series where I'm attempting to master all seven basic skateboarding tricks in Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One , over twenty weeks (or ten fortnights).  Each episode is a short Sunday check in to show where I'm at after each two week period of practicing. Generally I aim for at least an hour practice session every second day if weather or my work schedule permits. These are the links to Episode One and Episode Two  should you feel the need to see where I started.  I'm not a complete newbie, having been a relatively hardcore skater through the late eighties and early nineties, however I was mostly a mini ramp and curb skater, and never really maintained my skills beyond riding and ollies.  The explosion of council built concrete parks came a decade too late for me to maintain my mini ramp skills. Once we closed our own skate park in ...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Major Parties and Their Promises

T he Australian Federal Election date has now been announced as May 3rd, 2025. As such I thought it might be interesting to explore some of the parties and candidates in a series of articles leading up to a final wrap up in the days after the winners are announced. This is by no means an unbiased viewpoint. I've said many times my political leanings are to the woke left because those people are way better at embracing casual Friday at work (though some of the more extremist left do have to be reminded clothes are still a mandatory requirement). The obvious place to start is with the two most boring centralist parties pretending to be either left or right but actually doing their best impression of 'cake' - everybody likes cake! The Australian Labor Party Otherwise known as the incumbent, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vying for his second term. The party is campaigning on seven key points including: Helping with the cost of living. Free GP visits & even cheaper m...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...