Walt Disney had a clear vision: to make boys and girls happy.
So I found myself appalled — and a wee bit frightened for the Disney
culture — in The Lone Ranger when,
contrary to the entire history and tone of the Lone Ranger mythology, a villain
slowly plunges a knife into a ranger’s belly, reaches up into his quivering
guts, removes his heart and eats it in front of him as he chokes to death on
his own blood.
I hope that description shocks you. It shocked me and I’ve seen
some terrible, terrible violence in movies over the years. But never straight-up
cannibalism in a picture made by the House of Mouse, the studio that brought us
bottled innocence The Little Mermaid,
Tinker Bell and a theme park attraction called Toontown. Not since Mary Poppins
(Julie Andrews) took her boobs out in S.O.B.
has the Disney audience been so cruelly betrayed.
Violence or not, though, The
Lone Ranger is a horrible misstep for Disney, which is clearly trying to jumpstart
some magic akin to the Pirates of the
Caribbean franchise. The Pirates movies,
the good and the stupid ones, always understood their tone; even the grimmer
episodes, with squid hearts in treasure chests and Jack Sparrow in the
afterlife, had a cheery bounce to their step. Here in The Lone Ranger the action is lifeless, the characters are
obscenely flat, and the style and tone ricochet off everything, like buckshot
fired into a blacksmith’s shop. It’s as if Disney, with its eternal legacy of
great storytelling, had suddenly forgotten how to tell a decent story.
The film makes no promises with its titles. You’d think a movie
titled The Lone Ranger would be about
the Lone Ranger, the masked cowboy who sets out to save the Old West from cattle
rustlers, banditos and silver barons. No, it’s more about Tonto, a Comanche
Indian with a dead bird on his head that he feeds corn meal as if it were alive
and squawking. A clue to who the real protagonist is can be found in the
casting: Tonto is played by Johnny Depp, eternal scene-stealer and movie
bandit. The guy can’t make a cameo without getting his name above the title.
Sure enough, Depp, caked in mud and warpaint, has the best lines
here — including a great line after his partner says his famous “high ho,
Silver” catchphrase — even as the film continuously wanders through very mediocre
territory. The whole thing is told from Tonto’s perspective and even uses his
unreliable narration from 1933 to embark on a story that takes place in 1869.
His audience is a peanut-chomping boy at a Wild West exposition. Depp is in
old-man makeup and it’s remarkable how cheap old-man makeup still looks in
films.
The Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer, who played the Winklevoss twins in
The Social Network), is the film’s dopey
afterthought. He enters the film as a weakling, and maintains that posture for
120 minutes. “This is the first time I’ve fired a gun in nine years,” he tells
Tonto during a gunfight. (“Best keep that to yourself, Kemosabe,” Tonto says
back.) By the end of the film, though, especially in that mayhem-scorched final
20 minutes, the Lone Ranger suddenly becomes a seasoned pro, galloping his
trusty steed Silver through train cars, hurtling off saloon rooftops and
winging bad guys from hundreds of feet away. He is the least heroic character
until the movie requires him to be the most heroic character, and then he
becomes Bruce Willis on overdrive.
The plot involves a mish-mash of western motifs — including a heavy
homage to Once Upon A Time in the West
— but it mostly boils down to a railroad tycoon who is willing to launch an
Indian genocide if it means his trains get to steam right up to silver deposits
on Indian land. This stock Old West archetype (played by Tom Wilkinson) uses
the deformed monster and heart nibbler Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) to
whip up an Indian panic scary enough to get the cavalry to show up with sabers
rattling.
Between the rail tycoon, Butch and the cavalry captain, these are
some bad dudes. First, let me reiterate this: Butch eats a guy’s heart. In a
Disney movie! This can’t be repeated enough. Elsewhere, the villains and their
henchmen shoot priests, murder a posse of rangers, use a crank-driven Gatling
gun to exterminate a tribe of Comanche, they kill two of the movie’s three
black characters (one of them is scalped), threaten to rape a woman twice, skulls
are crushed in with wooden beams and questionable jokes are made about what is
most definitely a gay cowboy. All totaled up, this is one violent and
profoundly upsetting Disney movie, one that goes against the very spirit of the
brand. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised from a director whose first name is
Gore.
These are unforgivable errors on Verbinksi and Disney’s parts,
but their impacts would have been lessened if The Lone Ranger were simply better in other departments, but it
fails at nearly every aspect. The jokes are either laugh-out-loud funny (Tonto
literally kicking a dead horse) or chronically immature (a burping Silver).
Many of the sequences are too long and end with little payoff, including one
scene at a campfire with vampire bunnies. The entire film lacks any real
momentum, and every time it picks up speed the narrative pauses to bounce us
back to the 1933 storytelling framework. It’s all simply too long, too slow and
often downright boring.
The Long Ranger’s only
redemption is its unearned, unjustified finale, which blasts us with Gioachino
Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” the Lone Ranger’s official theme song. It
cues up for the last 20 minutes or so, with Tonto and the Lone Ranger bringing
their A-game to a rather epic two-train chase through Old West locations. This
music and the action it’s set to — even after all the heinous violence this
movie tortured me with — lifted my spirits immensely. The Lone Ranger rides
Silver atop a moving train, and then in the train, as he shoots through windows
and gallops past gunslingers. Tonto has a slapstick bit with a ladder balanced
precariously on a train rail. The mood is light and fun, the music is thumping,
the action is serious but never gross or violent, the movie is actually
accelerating … for this very brief moment, The
Lone Ranger finds its groove. If only the whole movie would have been like
this.
I recommend that last sequence, but I can’t in good conscience
recommend the two hours that gets you to that point. I especially urge you to
think twice before taking your young children.
Imagine that: a Disney movie too violent for your children. Sad
stuff.
(So yeah, I didn't like this movie, but check out some of the publicity stills. They're quite good.)
