The Lone Ranger (Part 1 of 2)

The Lone Ranger

 Uh, we already had a Jonah Hex or a Wild Wild West movie. Why do we need another modern action western?

Now that I have finally watched the movie all the way through, I can safely say that the movie is highly flawed and uneven. There are some flourishes of good things that work, however there is also a huge chunk of a subplot taken out of the movie. The is a complete mess and some things really don't make sense. There are so many issues with the story that the entire thing is just an uneven shit-storm of a movie.

While I enjoy long movies, this one really does feel overly long and drawn out. It wants to be an epic western with an epic length. And, it really hurts the movie a great deal. The other issues is the reasoning behind even making a Lone Ranger movie in the first place. No one was asking for a Lone Ranger movie, yet we got a major motion picture with a major budget. And, the movie actually bombed in the lone run.

Johnny Depp, while interesting, sort of takes away from the lead character, which the movie is named after. And, there's no getting around it. Tonto does get a bit of an interesting back story, however the loony nature of the character is a bit tiresome for me. He's too much like Jack Sparrow, way too much like Sparrow. Tonto is all over the marketing, while the actual lead character is on the sidelines.

The Lone Ranger is a boring character and it doesn't help that Armie Hammer bring nothing to the role. He starts out as an one-note character and ends being an one-note character. Hammer is so boring that all the scenes are dragged down by his dullness. And, why is the Lone Ranger a complete and utter joke to everyone? Why couldn't they make him a stronger character?

The tone is all over the place and it truly harms any good will that this movie has. The story shift from frantic humor in its first and third acts, but has same serious subject matter in the second too. We see Native Americans get slaughtered in such a brutal manner that it is hard to swallow the more nonsensical scenes that are to come in the third act.

I also hate the heel-turn of one of the characters that happens toward the end of the second act. I personally think the character would have been more interesting if he realized he was being tricked and tried to redeem himself after the big reveal of the true bad guy. Instead, we just get the by the numbers heel-turn that you can see a mile away just as this character first appears.

This the same lazy writing we get with the two main villains. They're just generic “fill in the blank” villains without much complexity. Heck, Nero from Star Trek 2009 is a better bad guy than these two blokes/ One has the trait of being really ugly and the other is clean cut and a businessman. 

There is a better that needed to be fleshed out.  Whereas this script feels rushed and needed a few more passes with another script writer or doctor.