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The Wright State Guardian
Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025 | News worth knowing
Wright State Guardian

Lone Ranger worth a matinee viewing, but not much else

Well Kemo Sabe, Gore Verbinski’s Lone Ranger gets a marginal thumbs up from me.

I will admit, when I heard Disney was going to do a Lone Ranger movie, the movie I saw was not the movie I expected.  I was expecting the story to be set in modern day with Nicolas Cage playing the Lone Ranger as a biker bounty hunter with a silver motorcycle, and Tonto either being turned into  a hot girl or an extremely annoying relief character. The latter is almost true.

The film is, of course, based upon the popular radio and television show of the same name that was about a mysterious masked man and his Native American sidekick. This movie gives us an origin story in which we see how The Lone Ranger and Tonto met.

The basic plot features the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) who is found dead by Tonto (Johnny Depp) and somehow comes back to life. The group the Ranger was with is ambushed by the outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), and the ranger's brother is killed in the ambush. He then vows vengeance and to find out why he was murdered.

Both Hammer and Depp have good chemistry and do the roles justice for the most part. There are few moments in which the characters get my nerves. Hammer’s Ranger had a by the books approach throughout the film and it is annoying at some points. There is also that part of me that wishes the producers cast an actual Native American actor for the part of Tonto, but I’ll keep politics out of this.

Another thing I really like about the film is all the updates made to the franchise, mainly to the costume department. A lot of the costumes have all these cool little things added to them.  Let’s face it, if they had used the original Lone Ranger costume, no one would be able to take it seriously. No offense to the original show and actor.

It’s pretty obvious that Verbinski is a very big fan of Western movies. He showed off his love of Spaghetti in Rango, and now in this film, he shows his love for American Westerns.  Being a Western lover myself, I could spot possible references to John Ford and Sam Peckinpah movies.

Now the biggest problem that this film has is something that can’t be ignored; there are massive shifts in tone that are misplaced and can throw people off. They threw me off at least. Now I understand what this film wants to be.  It wants to be a fun summer blockbuster that has both light comedic moments and have some dark elements, but the dark elements and light comedic moments happen right after one another.

Another problem I have with it is that it’s far too long. Some of the action scenes and the framing devices could’ve been cut out; this is not story that really warrants a two and half hour time frame. I understand that they wanted to take their time and expand upon things, but they’ve could’ve just as easily compacted this stuff.

Overall, while The Lone Ranger has some problems, it still worth at least a matinee viewing.


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