I am torn between calling this an amusing cinematic motion picture and a fail of a remake. The Lone Ranger (2013), directed by Gore Verbinksi and modeled on the original radio and TV show, was very poorly received by the critical world—not to mention that it cost Disney millions of wasted dollars on production and development. First, the movie was two-and-a-half hours long, which I found to be a huge mistake because it allowed Verbinksi ample time to stuff unnecessary subplots and not-so-subtle lessons into the film. Furthermore, although it was designed to be a family flick, its PG-13 rating really pushed the boundaries of acceptability with an abundance of unnecessary violence and gore and inconsistent tonal shifts to some really mature content.
Yet despite its poor reception, I didn’t find this movie as disappointing as I anticipated. Instead, the movie was gripping, funny, aesthetically beautiful, and whittled to a high degree of efficacy with some fantastic acting skills.
When the vicious Indian-slayer Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) murders the rangers, everyone assumes the righteous to a fault John Reid (Armie Hammer) was killed with them. But Tonto (Johnny Depp), a Comanche Indian, discovers he is still alive after being led to him by a horse, whom he names Silver. Thinking Reid is a spirit walker, someone who returned from the “other side” and now cannot be killed, these two unlikely heroes team up to bring Cavendish to justice.
To be honest, it takes quite a while for Reid, referred to as the Lone Ranger, and Tonto to become a team. In fact, you don’t see any mutual respect or chemistry between these characters until the last 20 minutes of the film—when the William Tell Overture carries us through the intense action-packed climax and plops us down quite nicely at the film credits. Notice how I said “these characters” don’t have any chemistry. The actors who play them, on the other hand, interact magnificently. The stellar acting skills, combined with the fantastic action sequences and aesthetic, yet antiquated, beauty of the set (both real and graphically enhanced) are clearly the best features of this film.
But this sublimity is tainted by a few unfortunate decisions on Verbinski’s part, all of which result in an inconsistent movie that is somewhat drawn-out with unnecessary subplots. The most significant of these is the framing device: offsetting the storyline is an unnecessary and ruinous sub-story. A young boy wandering through a traveling fair stops and talks to one of the exhibits, which just so happens to contain an aged Tonto, who is keen on sharing his story.
Now, if the script had left it at just this, that wouldn’t have been cause for complaint: it would explain why the film is told from the perspective of Tonto, instead of the Lone Ranger (which, apparently, was a deliberate decision on Verbinski’s part to bypass the supposedly racist perception of The Noble Savage, as he was portrayed in the original shows). But he makes the disastrous mistake of funneling the entire film through this boy and old Tonto. First of all, why is this young child interested in talking to an old Indian enough to sit through two and a half hours of conversation with a total stranger? Second, going back and forth between the action and the boring fair provided abrupt interruptions at critical times and high-intensity scenes that slowed down the drama and effectively ruined both the mood and the grip-your-seat-in-anticipation-while-biting-your-nails-in-expectancy atmosphere. Third, it was obvious the director had a very specific agenda with this film and he used this as a leash that allowed him to drag the viewers along in directions irrelevant to the story line in an attempt to get his point across.
Admittedly, he did have some valid points, like how the white men are not necessarily the good guys (while they are the conquering dominators bent on wiping out the Indians to achieve their goal of cultivating the west), but what was the point of introducing a weird romance between Reid and his brother’s wife? And why did he need to include a superfluous scene in the brothel? It was this unfortunate scaffolding that tainted the suspense of this film, so instead of being innovative and clever, it came across as tepid and altogether too premeditated.
Perhaps the movie quote that summarizes this whole movie enterprise best is the closing line of the movie. It is only in the last minute of the film that the Lone Ranger’s signature line finally makes an appearance: “Hi-ho Silver, away!” I felt myself reminiscing on the black-and-white TV show of the past—finally (finally!) we had the quote that represented the good old days when I would lie on my parents’ bed with my siblings, eating candy and downing soda (which was a big treat since we normally weren’t supposed to bring food upstairs)! But then Tonto crushes my daydream, responding with a disgusted look: “Never do that again.”
Yup: not only was that little scene never going to happen again, but the Lone Ranger remake was never going to bring back the innocence and family-friendly show of the past. Perhaps it’s time I accept that we are in a darker world today than we were in before—a new Dark Ages, if you will (but for an entirely different reason).
Oh well, at least I will always have the memories.