The Lone Ranger

The much awaited Disney product The Lone Ranger is a disappointing craft. Depending too much on the Pirates of the Caribbean series in styling the canvas, The Lone Ranger is a tiring experience for its duration of around 2 hours and 30 minutes. The story doesn’t really move forward and it’s stuck in a simple villain chase.

The plot here has John Reid returning to his home land to meet his brother Dan who is a Texas Ranger. His journey in the uncompleted railroad happens to be eventful as he tries to prevent two prisoners Butch Cavendish and an American Indian Tonto from escaping.  Cavendish manages to escape with the help of his henchmen but Tonto gets arrested. Dan appoints John as a ranger and during their hunt for Cavendish the whole gang gets attacked by Cavendish and everyone except John dies. Tonto who escaped from the prison happens to find the dead rangers and he helps John because he believes that John is a spirit walker. The content is basically about the attempts of John to kill Cavendish and protect his brother’s family. With characters having mysterious flashbacks and all, the stage is set for a vigilante fun ride.

Well, the look and feel of the POTC series is there and with Johnny Depp repeating his Jack Sparrow attitude, some humor is definitely there. What I felt as a discomfort was the tiring duration of the film which kind of had this elongated feel. Flashbacks, usual dramas and relatively less number of set pieces make the movie dull. By the time those last stunts involving the two trains happen, you might have yawned a lot of time.

On the performance aspect, Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp do manage to pull off an impressive chemistry on screen. Hammer is good as the determined lawyer turned ranger. Jhonny Depp will surely make you laugh with his performance as Tonto, but what’s sad is that the actor is simply repeating his Pirate avatar. William Fichtner and Tom Wilkinson did their antagonist part nicely. Ruth Wilson doesn’t have much to do apart from some risky stunts.

Director Gore Verbinski couldn’t conceive the idea in a fresh way. The screenplay wasn’t having the required pace and it gets stuck over the same things. Character designing was also quiet repetitive. The lack of set pieces also makes things uninteresting for the entertainment lovers. Very few memorable one liners are there among the dialogs. Cinematography is good and the Visual effects also showed that typical Disney quality.

Overall, The Lone Ranger is a dull entertainer mainly because of its duration. Watch it only if you miss seeing Johnny Depp doing those crazy stunts and goofy expressions with funny reasoning. My rating is 2/5 for this Disney Disappointment. You disappointed me Kimosabe.