The Lone Ranger
How is that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise can sprawl
over ten hours of self-indulgent weak plotting and hapless jokes, and take hods
of cash, but The Lone Ranger, which is just one
self-contained film (admittedly over-long but much less indulgent) and is
funnier and in many ways more diverting,
has failed at the box office and in most critics eyes? I was late coming to it, waiting
for the DVD, and I have to report that I was not in any way underwhelmed. I enjoyed it.
This film gives us the back stories of
Tonto and John Reid, the man who becomes the Lone Ranger, as individuals and as a
partnership. Johnny Depp
makes Tonto as quirky as Jack Sparrow, but his Tonto delivers deadpan asides
with resigned Keatonesque glances,
instead of mugging to the camera. Armie Hammer (who did good work as both the Winklevoss Twins in The Social Network) gives us a clean cut,
good looking hero, pure of heart
if not too quick on the uptake.
We have a large supporting cast, including
the three Brits, Helena
Bonham-Carter (this being a Johnny Depp film), Ruth Wilson, who has leapt from Luther to Hollywood via a small part in Anna Karenina, and Tom Wilkinson -
yes I do know there is a Hollywood bye-law that every film now made there has
to include Mr. Wilkinson - and
they all do sterling work for their dollars. (Get it? Brits doing Sterling? Oh never mind.)
Just as a sidebar issue; these British actors are required to
speak ‘American’, as Hollywood still insists that 19th century
Americans all spoke with 20th century American accents. This is despite the fact that between 1836 and 1914 immigration from
Europe peaked, with over 30 million people moving across the Atlantic. The recent Joel Brothers
True Grit rigorously kept to the 19th century
speech patterns from its source novel, but the last Western I remember
acknowledging that some of its characters would have retained their European
accents was Silverado, in which John Cleese
played a sheriff with definitely Home Counties’ enunciation. Mind you, it was only after
seeing Django that I discovered that 25% of
cowboys were black. What
else would all those freed slaves do? Go play the blues in Detroit?
The Lone Ranger has the same producer,
director and writers as most of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (Jerry Bruckenhiem, Gore Verbinski,
Justin Haythe and Ted Elliot), and
in many ways it is a kind of Pirates of the Monument Valley, but is a new take on the old Hi Ho Silver saga. It has plenty of dry
humour, large scale exciting set pieces, and a billion references to other
Westerns just to keep us on our toes. We also have a funny horse. When did we last see a funny
horse? It is lusciously shot
by Bojan Bazelli (Kalifornia, Dangerous Beauty, The Ring, Hairspray, Mr
& Mrs Smith) in John Ford country, Monument
Valley, and is scored by Han Zimmer. It is well designed and there are spectacular
set pieces, some of which include
just about every variation on the train-top chases and fights we have ever
seen, and a few we have not.
The plot is entirely subservient to the spectacle, at one point having
two new railway tracks, one of which must be superfluous, weaving alongside each
other through the mountains simply in order to provide us with more fairground
fun, as heroes and villains take
pot shots at each other, battling it out like Disney cartoon characters to the beats of the William
Tell Overture (of course we had to have the William
Tell Overture, in overdrive). It is all as deep and
meaningful as a typical Disney cartoon, but it is a high budget/high production
value live action Disney Cartoon, just like the Pirates.
