Anyone vaguely familiar with the multibillion-dollar “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise will feel more than a touch of déjà vu while watching Disney’s “The Lone Ranger:” a $250-million reboot of the vintage ’30s radio show and ’40s TV serial, it sees director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer retooling the much-loved, age-old western adventure stories to fit the mould of their enormously successful swashbuckling blockbusters. Once again, we're presented with the same overblown action set-pieces, slapstick comedy, bloated length and overstuffed plot, only this time it’s set in the Wild West rather than the seven seas, and instead of the swaggering Captain Jack Sparrow swinging his sword we have Tonto the noble savage with a dead bird on his head.
Indeed, there’s more than a hint of Johnny Depp’s popular pirate captain in his portrayal of the iconic Indian sidekick as he confidently strides between (and hangs on underneath) speeding runaway trains with nary a flinch — his red bandana and long black dreadlocks certainly won’t help quell comparisons, although that lifeless ex-crow perched atop his crown is an interesting addition. But Depp’s Sparrow-mimicking Tonto is the least of this film’s multitude of problems, and I’m not just talking about the disastrously low US box office takings — Depp’s deadpan performance is in fact the film’s most entertaining aspect, even if his casting as a Native American has the slightest whiff of whitewashing about it.
No, the problem with “The Lone Ranger” is that it in refitting the classic adventures of Tonto and Kemo Sabe for the “Pirates” brand, Verbinski and Bruckheimer have robbed the project of anything fresh, new or exciting — we’re now four movies into that mega-franchise, with a fifth arriving next summer, and so in “The Lone Ranger," we’ve seen it all before. This strips the film of any sense of unpredictability and essentially leaves us with a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie that's not quite a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie but is sort of “The Lone Ranger” — and who's going to be satisfied by that? On top of that, the storytelling is clunky as Depp’s Tonto and Armie Hammer’s by-the-book lawman turned masked vigilante John Reid, aka the Lone Ranger, partner up to pursue the scar-faced, human heart-eating outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) against the sweltering backdrop of mid-19th century Texas.
Depp and Hammer make for an amusing odd couple team-up, even if their constant bickering grates after a while, and Helena Bonham Carter does good in a small role as a gun-legged runner of a whore house. But they, alongside Verbinski’s energetic visual stylings and the excellent costume design, are one of the few redeeming features of this misguided, tediously overlong, two-and-a-half-hour mess, which is sure to leave the target teenage audience feeling bored and confused, and long-time “Lone Ranger" fans wishing for the simple and innocent heroics of the old shows. Verbinski and Depp fared much better in the Wild West with their 2011 computer animation “Rango” — and they didn't lose $190 million while doing so.
Rating: 4/10
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