During one sequence, there are only a couple of quick edits between a comic quip and the sight of Native Americans being mowed down by Gatling guns. All of this horror is then callously juxtaposed with sudden humor, most of it involving Tonto. Similarly, a flashback to Tonto’s youth recounts the massacre of his village at the hands of white miners. And so we get scenes of actual Comanche warriors (none wearing the whiteface of Depp) in futile battle against U.S. The overarching plot involves an illegal plan to run a train line through Comanche territory, thereby violating a peace treaty. Perhaps in an attempt to “update” Tonto, the filmmakers decided to place this fantasy jester within cruel history. The Lone Ranger is like whistling past a pop-culture graveyard. Even if Tonto is frequently portrayed as being wilier and wittier than the Lone Ranger himself (Armie Hammer, who was far funnier in The Social Network), the performance is still problematic. Instead of a noble savage, Depp gives us a comic savage – Willy Wonka with a dead bird on his head. For this update, director Gore Verbinski and his team of screenwriters seem to think there’s an easy solution to this: cast Johnny Depp!
From the broken English of the original, 1930s radio show to the various, minstrelsy television incarnations, Tonto has always been an, um, problematic figure. It’s like whistling past a pop-culture graveyard.Ĭertainly Tonto, the Native-American sidekick to the title hero, is an entertainment fixture that should have been left dead and buried. Veering wildly from clowning to cannibalism, joking to genocide, this is a baffling, ghoulish viewing experience.
#The lone ranger film movie
The Lone Ranger shares the same faults as other, recent summer blockbusters – it’s overly plotted and far too long – yet in one awful way the movie is quite unique.