The Lone Ranger - Movie Review

A few years ago a group of people gathered to turn a theme park ride into a movie. The movie turned out to be a huge success and made Johnny Depp into the highest paid actor in history. Now the same team returned and try to achieve the same with a typical western story… and they failed in earning their budget back, resulting in the second biggest flop for Disney in recent years, right after John Carter. Is it justified? No, because at least for me it was one of the better films of this year, ranking somewhere in the top 3. Also it seems that the movies does better outside the USA.

The film starts with a timeskip right off the bat from the present to an old forgotten past. Tonto, an Indian and played by Johnny Depp tells us the tale of the Lone Ranger. It is a story, in which he sometimes adds stuff or remember other things wrong, giving the viewer a lot of easter eggs to look for in the background, like peanuts packages. He is caught with a bandit, he pursued all his life. Idly he must witness his escape, as a law enforcement officer commits a clumsy mistake. Together these both must hunt down the bandits, getting into so many bizarre situations. It is a typical Western story, with rangers, Indians and corrupt businessmen who enrich themselves at the suffering of the people. I myself had issues with the slaughter of the natives no problem, but it is not shown ridiculous. It is also the only reason I could imagine why the movie got such bad reviews in America. The German synchronization was as good as always and may changed an aspect of the criticized portrayal of the Johnny Depps character.

The film, despite its excess length and the young target group is rather profound and gloomy, with a great number of deaths, that never occur visible. There are some scenes that seem tedious. They mostly portray serious issues. The majority of the film, however, is clearly geared for slapstick and made me laugh with its dozens of unexpected twists. The situations were quite fresh and unexpected, but fit the story without mistakes. The movie uses a dozen running gags as any good TV series does, which at first seem insignificant, but have enormous consequences for the course of the story. The chemistry between the title character Arnie Hammer and Johnny Depp could not be better. The rest of the cast does also an excellent job and doesn’t need to hide behind these superstars. Even Hans Zimmer, whose songs sound the same since "The Dark Knight" goes into new realms. It's just occurred to me, that he is the composer, after his name appeared in the credits.

I can recommend this movie to anyone who loved the Pirates-Series. It is essentially the same in a western setting, reaching the heights of the first movie. You should give it a try if you didn’t get the chance to watch it in the cinema when the blue-ray comes out.

Trailer: