Armie Hammer, as the title hero, plays second fiddle to Depp.
FILM REVIEW
‘The Lone Ranger’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, and some suggestive material
Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner
Run time: 149 minutes
The reason “The Lone Ranger” was not titled “Tonto” is simple – in marketing campaigns, familiarity does not breed contempt. But it probably should have been. Few will plunk down their hard-earned shekels to watch Armie Hammer blandly portray the masked title hero, but rather, to see Johnny Depp thoroughly Deppicize the American Indian character.
In the original “Lone Ranger” serials and TV show, Tonto was wise and practical. In this Disney version, the actor rebrands him as a typically Deppish kook with an impenetrable expression and a dead crow on his head. He has a melancholy backstory, and may be mentally ill. His face is caked with ashy makeup, and two black stripes run down his cheeks like permanent streaked tears. Yet Depp is more shtick than substance. His every broken-English line is deadpanned, and every countenance mugged. The performance is broad, wacky and comedically miscalculated.
Tonto is the latest of many garish, heavily costumed characters in Depp’s repartee, including Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands, The Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka and Hunter S. Thompson analog Raoul Duke. Ironically, the most accurate comparison is to his most creative characterization, loony Capt. Jack Sparrow of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, which earned him an Oscar nod. The jump is easy to make – Gore Verbinski, who helmed the first three “Pirates,” directs “The Lone Ranger” in a similarly over-the-top manner, and with a similarly convoluted screenplay. But this time, Depp’s performance isn’t nearly endearing enough to make the onslaught of vulgar flapdoodle tolerable.
The film is yet another origin story, using a pointless framing device where Depp is swamped in grotesque old-coot makeup, as an elderly Tonto regales a wide-eyed youngster with the tale of how he and the Lone Ranger met. Before he donned the mask, the Lone Ranger was just John Reid, a naïf returning to his hometown of Colby, Texas to administer justice as a district attorney. He’s even morally opposed to guns. There, his long-lost love (Ruth Wilson) is married to his brother (James Badge Dale), a rough-and-tough Ranger. Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), a scarred villain who literally eats the hearts of his rivals, is on the loose, and Tonto is on his tail. Helena Bonham Carter has a couple of scenes as a crimson-haired madam with a rifle hidden in her ivory leg.
Verbinski smashes all these characters together during the first of many literal runaway-train sequences. Implicated in the plot is a railroad baron (Tom Wilkinson) laying down track in hostile Comanche territory, which might be an action of Manifest Destiny, but is more of a crass metaphor for corrupt corporate interest. Westward expansion is the first of many tin-eared nods the director makes to Sergio Leone’s classic “Once Upon a Time in the West,” including recurring bits of Ennio Morricone’s iconic score. Verbinski made all those references in his 2010 animated feature “Rango,” but where that had some well-considered subtext, “The Lone Ranger” is a jumble of half-formed ideas ground up in the gears of obnoxious, slapstick-laden spectacle. Thou shalt not skirt Leone’s hem without the proper amount of reverence.
The film is also tumescent beyond reason. At two-and-a-half hours, the $250 million-budgeted film screams for a judicious edit. It builds and builds (and builds) to a daffy final action sequence which ends up not being the final action sequence, because it’s followed by another, daffier, more final action sequence. It’s about as messy as mindless cinematic diversions get. Both the Lone Ranger and Tonto are given reasonably progressive arcs, but the nobility of the original characters is lost. They’re more bumbling and lucky than smart and heroic. Hammer’s Ranger lacks charisma, and at one point is dragged through a pile of horse manure by Depp’s tragic-idiot Tonto. Even the Ranger’s loyal and dignified white horse, Silver, is a comic-relief moron who smirks and swills booze. Longtime fans of the classic duo may feel the urge to ride Depp out of town on a rail.
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