The Lone Ranger
starring Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale and Helen Bonham Carter
screenplay by Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio
directed by Gore Verbinski
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
It’s like watching the choreography of Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean all together and at once. As a very old man the Indian, Tonto, is performing as a circus Native American (a Comanche) in San Francisco in 1933. He retells the entire Lone Ranger story to a young boy. Johnny Depp was variously praised and condemned for his Native American performance. Personally, I thought it was just more Johnny Depp silliness. I don’t think it insults Native Americans in the second place because it’s just a joke in the first place. The film was not successful at the box office, and admittedly it is dumb. But I got a kick out of it.
Armie Hammer plays frontier District Attorney John Reid. John joins a posse led by his Texas Ranger brother, Dan, to capture the escaped outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner). Butch is a really nasty bad guy who likes to cut the hearts out of his victims. The posse is ambushed and everyone is killed. John is left for dead, but rescued by Tonto who is also pursuing Cavendish for his own reasons. The two team up. Tonto’s goal is vengeance, to kill Cavendish for murdering his entire village long ago. John’s goal remains bringing Cavendish to justice as an escapee and fugitive. But over the course of the story John becomes the vigilante masked man.
The plot is twisted by the fact that Cavendish is protected by the corrupt mayor of the local town, Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson). The mayor in turn is supported by a corrupt cavalry officer and his troops. Everyone is corrupted by the lure of silver in the Comanche territories. The powerful white men are fabricating an Indian war to disguise their illegal activities in the Indian territory.
The final twenty minutes of the movie are a fantastic chase and fight scene: wild horseback riding, crashing steam trains, shooting and explosions. I watched it twice. It pulls out every special effects trick and every stunt in the book, things you will recognize from any number of other movies.
This is the second movie I have seen recently featuring William Fichtner. He co-stars with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in Elysium. It is purely by coincidence that I’ve seen him twice now in close proximity. Or is it?
“What’s up with the mask?” is a running joke throughout the film. It’s cute how it keeps popping up.