Native American warrior Tonto recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid, a man of the law, into a legend of justice.
Supremely competent, completely forgettable.
The spirits fly in and out of The Lone Ranger at random. It's nice to see them come and go. I just wish they'd stay for longer.
Not a good film.
While occasionally fun and far from the disaster many predicted, The Lone Ranger is over-plotted and over-long. More Pirates Of The Caribbean than Rango.
A few exciting set-pieces might be the least one expects in a 150-minute summer blockbuster, but the prolonged locomotive-set denouement in particular deliciously captures the spirit of the Boys’ Own serials to which Verbinski’s film aspires. A shame they couldn’t have trimmed the fat.
Talk about a pleasant surprise! Real storytelling, well thought-out and beautifully, at times insanely, executed, with excitement, laughs and fun to make you feel seven years old again.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that the film ends up on a runaway locomotive as this feels like a train wreck throughout.
Two and a half hours later, we arrive at a pretty-thrilling climactic railroad chase. The trouble is by then the film has almost buried some laudable revisionist and existential ambitions under clashing influences and eccentric digressions.
It's not often you can criticise a blockbuster for trying to be too clever, rather than not clever enough.
Verbinski stuffs too many stunts and leaden moments of slapstick into the mix but, even so, at least The Lone Ranger occasionally takes wing. That’s more than can be said for Wild Wild West, (1999) Hollywood’s last western on this scale, which was a true Turkey in every particular.
The masked man may well be back for two or three more films, but I can't help hoping that he's trotted over the horizon for the last time.
A trifle overlong and marred by a certain narrative confusion, it begins and ends with spectacular train chases worthy of Keaton's The General and is overall a handsome, exciting, affectionate movie.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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