Film Review: The Lone Ranger

Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer strut their hero stuff in The Lone Ranger
Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer strut their hero stuff in The Lone Ranger

“Hi-Ho, Silver! Away!”…meh.  When Hans Zimmer’s rehashed Sherlock Holmes score kicks into “William Tell Overture” mode, Disney’s new re-imagining of The Lone Ranger is at its best.  Unfortunately, this only happens twice.  What could have been (and should have been) a fun adventure ends up being an odd concoction of conflicting tones and a bloated story.  This “messiness” worked well in director Gore Verbinski’s last effort, Rango, but that film was about an eccentric chameleon in the midst of an identity crisis who ends up tangled in a Chinatown-esque conflict in a wild west animal town.  So, it was obviously poised to extend the limits of the bizarre.  The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, is about fun adventures.  Bad guys vs. good guys.  The film is 150 minutes long and easily could’ve been 90 minutes.  The few action set pieces are fun and well choreographed, but they lose their effect when they are bookended by a plodding story involving genocide, power struggles, and weird spiritual visions.

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