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Created Jul 09, 2013 11:07PM PST • Edited Jun 26, 2022 07:54PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   The Lone Ranger is Tonto’s movie. Good thing, since Tonto is played by Johnny Depp. Everybody knows this, just as everybody knows Johnny Depp is mighty white. Ironically, only in P.C. Hollywood would it be politically acceptable for a white guy to play an iconic Indian character in a 21st century movie.

   Personifying white guilt in face paint, he accepts all the slings and arrows directed at Native Americans before political correctness came over the land. “Injun” they call him, “Boy”, “Outcast”. Indeed, the White Man and the White Power Structure are the predominant enemy in this People’s History fairy tale.

   All of which makes it a bit much as a children’s fable. That and the fact that the Lone Ranger began as a radio serial and is now amped up to 11 hundred degrees FX by Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer.

   They might have gotten away with it if they’d kept it under two hours. At 2½ it taxes the soul, the patience and the bladders of the very young and their grandparents, who may have thought they were taking the tykes to an old-fashioned Western. Then there are the oscillations between massive carnage and goofball whimsy, bipolar transitions that barely compute. The whimsy occasionally tickles, but the carnage sickens.

   Is it a bad movie? Nope, even if most of the professional critics claim so. Yes, it’s a bit of a forced march, but it’s also an entertaining romp, a subversive riddle and yet another successful star vehicle. Who’s makes that vehicle worth watching? Johnny Depp, kemo sabe.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Johnny Depp is a past master at elliptical remarks and oddball expressions, deftly delivering these even under facepaint and beneath a dead crow. Depp fans – of which I’m one – won’t be disappointed.

   Armie Hammer’s effete lawyer turned Lone Ranger isn’t an inimitable performance, but it’s acceptable. Let’s see how he does in the sequel.

   Of the supporting cast:

   • William Fichtner is an uninvigorating villain.
   • Tom Wilkinson lacks gravitas as a corporate heavy.
   • Ruth Wilson is quietly affecting as the Lone Ranger’s sister-in-law. She’s worth watching.
   • James Badge Dale is less effective as her husband, the Lone Ranger’s more studly older brother.
   • Helena Bonham Carter is sexy-smart as a madam with something special ’neath her skirts.
   • Barry Pepper is less than distinctive as a Custer-like cavalry officer.
   • Saginaw Grant is wonderfully distinctive as a big Indian Chief.

   Finally, let’s hear it for Phoebe, who plays Silver, the Lone Ranger’s white stallion. Hmm, Phoebe? I don’t think that horse is a stallion.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

   Depp is really great, Hammer very good.

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Jerry Bruckheimer only has one scale. Massive. He’s a massive scale producer. Gore Verbinski is clearly his director of choice, especially when Johnny Depp’s involved, first with Pirates of the Caribbean and now with The Lone Ranger.

    Let’s credit the production for a darn good poop joke. Horseshit this time. Not great, but crafty and LOL.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    200 stuntmen. Hundreds of FX and visual artists. Two trains built. And destroyed.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    Take the PG-13 to heart. This savagely violent movie is not for little kids.

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

18. Violence Savage 3.7

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.3

    Nevermind the movie’s manifest supernatural elements. Let’s look at a few of its prosaic reality liberties.

    • Johnny Depp’s Tonto-look is based on a White man’s paintng of an imaginary Indian, says Gawker. Their post concludes with this tongue-in-cheek praise for Depp: “You combat those sterotypes, kemo sabe.”
    • Texas Rangers loom large in the movie. Hell, the hero is the Lone Ranger, as in Lone Texas Ranger. And yet the movie is set in Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah state line.
    • The Central Pacific Railroad is bastardized into something called the Transcontinental Railroad, meaning the nasty executive atop it must be one of the Big Four. Leland Stanford perhaps?

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.7

23. Biological Supernatural 3.2

24. Physical Surreal 3.0