The Lone Ranger

          Oh dear. For any of you who may have liked this movie, I advise you to either comment below or just turn back now. The Lone Ranger is supposed to be a buddy movie commemorating the original movies from back in the early twentieth century. Tonto the Native American (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer). However, in this new version, it is told as a flashback as Tonto tells the story to a little kid in what appears to be a sort of museum. Then we are instantly thrown into the middle of a train ride (the destination was not even given), only to be rattled back and forth in time for the next two and a half hours. This may work in a movie like Inception with a good director and a solid plot line. However, in The Lone Ranger, this technique was used in a feeble effort to create suspense and get an easy laugh out of the audience. Well that worked for the sixty-year-old retired folk in the theater I was in tonight, but it did not work for people like me who actually care about the quality of the work that I am seeing. I am ashamed that these filmmakers are employed. They do not care about preserving the dignity of cinema. They tried to throw a few sloppy shots in there that were supposed to make us feel that the cinematography was above average. That didn't work. Depp (you know, the guy who cares way more about music than acting, but still gets paid millions for crappy work. His performance in Dark Shadows, for example.) made a few of the "comedic" faces that he universally puts into all of his characters. That only worked for the retirees. And you know a screenplay is bad when I jokingly predict the Lone Ranger's words and then he says those same exact words just after my friend laughs at how ridiculous I sounded. Plus the western sets these days look like just that -- sets. There is no more authenticity like there was back when the real westerns were made by great directors like Sergio Leone, Robert Aldrich, and such. Speaking of which, movies in the '20s had better effects than The Lone Ranger. Usage of green screen technology was always obvious, and it made the believability go completely out of the artificial window. Walking into the theater, my expectations were pretty low, but I figured I could at least enjoy the music. Nope. The most clichéd pieces of music of all time were chosen. Often the music would often pause and then resume after something "funny" happened, simply begging for desperate laughter. I could only laugh at how pathetically amateurish the storytelling was. Characters like that of Helena Bonham Carter appeared to have no other purpose than to drag more fans in for their money. Corny one-liners, cookie-cutter editing, and predictable story lines were just a few things that ultimately brought this movie down six feet under, buried alive just like the Lone Ranger himself.