Film review: The Lone Ranger

Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as John Reid

Instead this wayward semi-spoof focuses on trusty sidekick Tonto. Given that he’s played by Johnny Depp, box office superstar, and the Lone Ranger is played by Armie Hammer, one can see the studio’s point of view.

But the movie appears doomed almost from the off. Depp seems to have indulged himself massively, and at the studio’s expense given that the film is set to lose almost $200m. So is it really a big, fat, waddling turkey? Well, yes. There are several serious flaws in the construct, any one considered fatal, not least the decision to play this Wild West resurrection piece as a tongue-in-cheek farce.

Hammer is the greenhorn who arrives in the west just as his lawman brother is murdered. Hooking up with a bizarre Indian warrior he finds himself at the heart of a battle between progress and tradition. Leeds-born Tom Wilkinson is the railroad chief behind the evil deeds, and he makes for a plausible villain. He plays it straight. Hammer looks like he’s trying to play it straight – and comedy doesn’t sit with the Wild West unless you’re Mel Brooks – but everything is unbalanced by Depp’s trademark mugging and gurning.

The old TV series was a cheesy affair. The 1980s big screen remake was a disaster. And this film suffers from the same malaise. Not a spoof, not serious but somewhere in between, it emerges as an uncomfortable hybrid. What’s more director Gore (Pirates  of the Caribbean) Verbinski takes a big risk setting parts of the movie in John Ford’s beloved Monument Valley. Ford and John Wayne would turn in their graves.

Seemingly, studios lack the nerve to make a straight film adaptation of a TV show, regardless of how old and creaky it may be. They tinker, they amend, they reimagine. Thus we get this – a lame-brained buddy flick, an unfunny travesty and an example of extreme star indulgence. There are hints of a half-decent Western buried deep within The Lone Ranger but the mood is shattered whenever Depp appears on screen. Maybe he’s been having us all on. If so, he’s just been found out. Big time.