The Lone Ranger - quick review (1 Viewer)

[Brandon Conway]

Saw this tonight at the $3 theater, on 50% off Tuesday for $1.50, and...

An ugly, interminable experience, The Lone Ranger continually undermines itself and ends up with no identity other than being terrible. Dramatic points are underhanded by strained comic mischief, and action sequences have no sense of continuity. Is there mysticism or is there just hard reality? Will the story be told straightforwardly or will we jump around in a non-linear fashion? The whole exercise fails to entertain on a visceral escapist level and on its pseudo attempt at historical contemplation, miscalculating dreadfully on its white man's burden message wrapped in frustrating noise. But perhaps worst of all, it makes the hero a buffoon, surviving through our tale by happenstance and sheer dumb luck, taking TWO HOURS to come to the conclusion any competent telling of this classic tale would accomplish in the first ten minutes.

2/10

 

[Emanuel1]

Was the "Lone Ranger" 2013, as bad as the critics said it was?

 

[Dee Zee]

I loved it. Plan to buy the blu when it comes out. This from last weeks NYTimes:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/movies/reconsidering-box-office-bombs-years-after-the-fact.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[RobertR]

I loved it. Plan to buy the blu when it comes out. This from last weeks NYTimes:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/movies/reconsidering-box-office-bombs-years-after-the-fact.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Ugh. If anything, that NY Times article more firmly establishes the film as having little to do with The Lone Ranger character, and something not to be bothered with. It's rather ridiculous that the writer has to search for political undertones he likes to find something favorable to say about the film.

 

[Tony J Case]

I finally got around to watching this terrible, terrible movie last night - a fucking disaster! While I'm way too young to have watched the show in the 50's, it was always in rotation on the UHF channels, so I grew up loving the Lone Ranger. So much like Man of Steel, while I knew that this was going to be a gawdawful terrible movie, I also knew that I had to see it.

Why, why, why was this Tonto: The Movie? Tonto gets all the back story, all the exposition, all the flashbacks, all the character development while the Ranger is mostly ingored. Worse, the Ranger is such a terrible character - he's a two-dimensional milksop, he's a worthless idiot - he is NOT a hero, and he needs to be. The Lone Ranger should be strong and right and worthy of having a faithful companion in Tonto. Instead, he's played as a buffoon - and that's unforgivable!

No, wait - even worse than that: there's no chemistry between the Ranger and Tonto. They actively don't like each other, and they're only together because Silver the Magical Spirit Horse chose him. They're not partners, not companions - they're just hunting the same man. That's not right!

And there was absolutely no reason for this movie to be two and a half hours long. There's just not enough story to support this running time. The Ranger's set-up could have been told in 15 minuets - bring the character in, meet his brother, go out after Butch Cavendish, and ambush. Boom, roaring rampage of revenge. But no - the ambush happens 40-ish minutes into the movie! And the movie just goes on and on and on forever - by the time the climax comes crashing onto the screen, I'm just so burnt out and want this thing to be over, I couldn't care.

And the comedy - I am SO goddamned tired of the Wacky Adventures of Captain Jack. If Depp never does another movie, I'd be fine with that. And it's so inappropriately placed too - here's this really dark and heavy scene of the Calvary slaughtering Indians by the dozens and they keep cutting away to Tonto and the Ranger doing schtick. The mood whiplash really takes you out of the movie!

Taken on it's own, (or say 80 minutes into the movie) the climax is pretty cool. Okay, physics doesn't work like that - at all - but the scene has personality and energy and a sense of fun that the rest of the movie didn't. When the Theme kicks in, you know some shit is about to get real.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm left trying to figure out which movie is more disrespectful to the character: what Man of Steel did to Superman or what this movie did to the Lone Ranger. But they both fucking SUCKED!

 

[David_B_K]

Sounds as if they took the Seth Rogan/Green Hornet approach with The Lone Ranger. I could tell from the trailer that life is too short to waste time on this movie.

And too many movies today are just too damned long. What happened to editing?

 

[TravisR]

Sounds as if they took the Seth Rogan/Green Hornet approach with The Lone Ranger. I could tell from the trailer that life is too short to waste time on this movie.

And too many movies today are just too damned long. What happened to editing?

I say it all the time but I think it's because the studios feel that the audience is going to be pissed if they paid $12 to 'only' see a 90 minute movie. Personally, I think the audience will be happy with a good movie whether it's 90 minutes or 150 minutes (and I know that they aren't happy with a bad movie that's also long).

 

[Tony J Case]

What did Ebert say? A good movie can never be too long and a bad movie can never be too short?

Honestly, there very well may have been an - well, I wouldn't say good, but perfectly serviceable - flick if they had only trimmed an hour out of this bloated mess.

 

[Tommy R]

I saw it last summer and like it a lot. But I agree that it WAS too long for pacing reasons. For starters they could've cut out all that stuff with that little boy that bookended the movie and kept interrupting it throughout. Not sure how much time that all added up to, but it sure would've helped.

 

[Mark Booth]

I finally got around to watching this terrible, terrible movie last night - a fucking disaster! While I'm way too young to have watched the show in the 50's, it was always in rotation on the UHF channels, so I grew up loving the Lone Ranger. So much like Man of Steel, while I knew that this was going to be a gawdawful terrible movie, I also knew that I had to see it.

Why, why, why was this Tonto: The Movie? Tonto gets all the back story, all the exposition, all the flashbacks, all the character development while the Ranger is mostly ingored. Worse, the Ranger is such a terrible character - he's a two-dimensional milksop, he's a worthless idiot - he is NOT a hero, and he needs to be. The Lone Ranger should be strong and right and worthy of having a faithful companion in Tonto. Instead, he's played as a buffoon - and that's unforgivable!

No, wait - even worse than that: there's no chemistry between the Ranger and Tonto. They actively don't like each other, and they're only together because Silver the Magical Spirit Horse chose him. They're not partners, not companions - they're just hunting the same man. That's not right!

And there was absolutely no reason for this movie to be two and a half hours long. There's just not enough story to support this running time. The Ranger's set-up could have been told in 15 minuets - bring the character in, meet his brother, go out after Butch Cavendish, and ambush. Boom, roaring rampage of revenge. But no - the ambush happens 40-ish minutes into the movie! And the movie just goes on and on and on forever - by the time the climax comes crashing onto the screen, I'm just so burnt out and want this thing to be over, I couldn't care.

And the comedy - I am SO goddamned tired of the Wacky Adventures of Captain Jack. If Depp never does another movie, I'd be fine with that. And it's so inappropriately placed too - here's this really dark and heavy scene of the Calvary slaughtering Indians by the dozens and they keep cutting away to Tonto and the Ranger doing schtick. The mood whiplash really takes you out of the movie!

Taken on it's own, (or say 80 minutes into the movie) the climax is pretty cool. Okay, physics doesn't work like that - at all - but the scene has personality and energy and a sense of fun that the rest of the movie didn't. When the Theme kicks in, you know some shit is about to get real.

I guess at the end of the day, I'm left trying to figure out which movie is more disrespectful to the character: what Man of Steel did to Superman or what this movie did to the Lone Ranger. But they both fucking SUCKED!

With regard to 'The Lone Ranger', my sentiments exactly!

I'm generally pretty good at suspending disbelief for the sake of being entertained. And I would have gladly suspended my disbelief to be entertained by 'The Lone Ranger'. The problem, however, is that 'The Lone Ranger' isn't very entertaining. A few moments here, a few moments there, but, overall, it was a TRAIN WRECK of a movie (pun intended)!

The good news… one less movie I'll need to buy on Blu-ray!

'Man of Steel', on the other hand, was awesome!

Mark

 

[Jesters Movie Machine]

Keeping procrastinating on watching this one. I am a huge Wahlburg fan, really really cant wait for this to come out on DVD

 

[RobertR]

Keeping procrastinating on watching this one. I am a huge Wahlburg fan, really really cant wait for this to come out on DVD

What association does someone named "Wahlburg" have with this movie?

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

What association does someone named "Wahlburg" have with this movie?

He must believe this thread is related to Lone Survivor, which of course it is not

 

[RobertR]

He must believe this thread is related to Lone Survivor, which of course it is not

Makes sense!

 

[Brian Dobbs]

barely worth a rental

 

[Vic Pardo]

I'm a huge fan of the original TV series and the two movie spinoffs in the mid-1950s, all of which I only rediscovered within the last two or so years, although I did watch the TV show a lot as a child. So I decided to give the new movie a chance when it came on cable this past Saturday afternoon. After 45 minutes I bailed. I just found the treatment of the two main characters so appalling. They're just outright buffoons in the scenes I saw. I couldn't take it.