THE LONE RANGER

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Grade: C+

Starring: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Ruth Wilson, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, and Helena Bonham Carter

Premise: A straight-laced lawyer dons a mask and takes justice into his own hands after his brother is killed by a ruthless bandit.

Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, some suggestive material, disturbing images and brief language

Many movies would benefit from being shorter. Director Gore Verbinski’s new two-and-a-half-hour, action-and-special-effects-stuffed take on the classic radio/TV adventure The Lone Ranger is unquestionably near the top of that list. A bloated monolith that feels at least twice its already-considerable length and contains multiple beginnings and still more endings, plus bewildering shifts in tone, Ranger seems to be a classic example of people trying to manufacture huge, epic awesomeness where there doesn’t need to be any. The big screen adaptation of a hit radio show about Cowboys and Indians that became a hit black-and-white TV show in the ‘50s was never going to be the biggest, best action movie of a summer movie season—let alone one already featuring Superman, Iron Man, Monsters from Pixar and The Great Gatsby—no matter how many millions you throw at it (a reported $250 million, in this case).. But daggone if Verbinski, his backer, Disney, and his producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, aren’t going to try.

Oh, but Verbinski/Disney/Bruckheimer’s last big grand spectacle, a little seafaring doozy called The Pirates of the Caribbean, became a four-movie, multibillion dollar enterprise, and it certainly didn’t skimp on the epic. So why aim low?

In any case, I believe there is a very nice little hour-and-a-half or hour-and-forty-five-minute Western adventure movie inside the noisy thunderclap that is Ranger, and I very badly want to see it. The pieces are all in place. There’s a likeable hero (Armie Hammer) who does good, fights bad guys, spares lives when he can, and can ride a horse like no other. There’s Johnny Depp playing the hero’s Indian sidekick/mentor Tonto, who’s weird and goofy in an intriguing sort of way, and no one does intriguing/weird/goofy like Johnny Depp. There’s a legitimately scary villain in knife-wielding outlaw Butch Cavendish (an unrecognizable, and impressively sinister, William Fichtner). There are sprawling Western landscapes, a rousing, grin-inducing bit of instrumental theme music almost everyone will recognize (“William Tell’s Overture”), and a cool good guy dispensing justice the way many audience members would love to. Basically, for modern moviegoers, there’s the cool sense that we’re watching, and enjoying, something people watched and enjoyed fifty years ago, and we get snatches of what made it so wonderful.

But then the screenwriters go and add stuff to it. The hero, setup and premise are admittedly simple, and have been done in varied versions before (the Robin Hood, Batman and Zorro stories all come to mind, what with a mysterious figure doing heroic, risky things for the good of the common people), but the lousy, predictable framing device used to tell the main story in flashback doesn't start things promisingly. In fact, it makes it a while before we even meet our hero, John Reid. And then multiple beginnings, multiple storylines, and a revolving door full of worthless characters we're supposed to care about make it even longer until he puts on the mask. From there, the movie adds not one, but two more villains, plus political undertones manifested rather unsubtly in one of those Avatar-style battlefield massacres where cold-hearted white dudes with guns mow down crowds of indigenous spearchuckers. What's next? Lame comic/fantasy-element devices like cannibalistic bunnies and a horse that drinks beer and climbs trees? Yep. A slightly uncomfortable love story where our hero carries a torch for his older brother’s prettily pouting wife (Ruth Wilson), who becomes conveniently available after said brother (James Badge Dale) is tragically killed? Yessir. And how about multiple endings? And never forget the obligatory scene where a villain, having finally cornered a hero with gun in hand, wastes time (and misses his chance to win the day and ruin the movie at the same time) by boasting about how he’s won, he’s beaten the hero, he’s going to get away, he’s going to be rich, he’s…You get the idea. He wasted the time. He doesn’t kill the hero. He doesn’t win. He shoulda just pulled the trigger.

If I sound cynical, it’s not my fault. Like I said, the elements are all there. It’s just that the plot development of squeaky-clean lawyer John Reid arriving at the town of Colby, Texas to join his old brother in the fight against crime and injustice—though, for John, strictly in the courtroom—should have taken about 10 minutes, instead of forty. And it would have been totally okay if he didn’t become a swashbuckling hero until after his brother, who deputized him, is killed tragically in an ambush during a pursuit of the villain—I promise, we won’t get bored seeing a setup: modern movie audiences have seen it many times. Even after John puts on the mask, joins forces with an mysterious but principled Indian named Tonto, and realizes there’s evil afoot (a crusading railroad tycoon happens to be more than he seems, possibly in cahoots with the evil Butch), no need to add another villain, especially one as dopey as Barry Pepper’s gentlemanly coward of an army captain. And why insert talented Oscar-nominee Helena Bonham Carter into a movie only for two scenes, both of which simply see her showing how her artificial leg has been outfitted with a high-powered rifle?

Oh, the performances are all solid—especially Depp doing another quirky-guy-with-an-accent without aping his Captain Jack Sparrow portrayal and Fichtner owning his moment in the sun after years on the sidelines in action flicks—the countryside and details all look great (props to the cinematography and special effects people) and the ending, featuring two runaway trains on which our heroes fight the three villains while also trying to save the girl and the other townspeople, proves Verbinski hasn’t lost his touch with massive battle scenes, a la Pirates. And yeah, the scenes of the Ranger riding his white horse, Silver, atop a speeding train while the William Tell Overture soars make you understand why people loved the Ranger back in the day. However…

It just felt too long. Too many scenes, too many characters, too many storylines, too many scenes of cackling villains who could end the movie but don’t, too many scenes of villains undergoing horrific accidents or injuries and bounding back up without a scratch because it’s not time for the movie to be over yet, and too many scenes of Dudley Do-Right-ish pratfalls followed by unexpectedly sobering scenes of Native American massacres that make you wonder who this movie is made for.

It’s not that there’s too much action. There is too much story. Lack of originality was always going to be a problem in a new reboot/adaptation; those are too common in this day and age. But Lone Ranger should have gone the route of the new Star Trek movies: it’s okay to have one main line of action, one villain, one basic plot—to feel like an episode, in other words—if your episode is well written, well-paced, and ends in a satisfying way. That’s what leaves audiences wanting more. Lone Ranger, despite some good performances, effects and memorable moments, feels more like the filmmakers threw everything they could think of at the proverbial wall, hoping something would stick and make this the Next Great Epic. It’s too bad.

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Justin Haythes, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio

Rated PG-13

Length: 149 minutes