The Lone Ranger (2013)

I don't even know where to start. I could do it with the five negative reviews I've read to find out why the bashing for this movie, asking myself if it's sabotage against Disney's superproductions that try something else than what already worked with the public (= pirates series and reboot to pirates series), or is just pure dumbness and flock behavior from the critics. Getting more into this would transform though this entry in one directly attacking others, by taking line by line what's written here and there and proving how shallow or hypocrite it is, and the result would be probably extremely boring and won't make any justice for "The Lone Ranger".

Don't take it the wrong way. If I'm looking at my entries, is most often the case that I'm in the line with the ranking on pretty much every site. So, it's not a general opinion, but I see that I'm stumbling more and more often on cases (as "Gravity" recently) when I'm actually astonished by how consistently is either appreciated or bashed a movie which is clearly far from the pole of value where the "experts" placed it. Ok, I'm outraged, I assume it's already clear :) .. Let me try to say something more useful for the de facto subject of the current entry ... First, this is not a movie to be taken as a standard western. Gore Verbinski's option for "Lone Ranger" is so "westernish" in the classic sense as it's "Rango" to "quote" from the same director's CV. It's clear from the first minutes that this movie doesn't take itself seriously, even more that's actually trying at least a bit some irony or satire on the genre. And it's probably sufficiently stylish and discrete to be completely missed by who was waiting a product that mandatory should've been a mix between John Ford and Sergio Leone and nothing else.

The story is simple. I don't want to give too much. The Lone Ranger, a pacifist attorney disappointed by the helpless attempts to enforce justice by the book in the wild west, and .. let's say his pal, Tonto, an indian who's a bit "gone" in this version, have some score to settle with a series of bad guys, more bad guys and very bad guys. That's one of the major issues of the movie by some. If there is more than a villain, already the critics' neurons start to get confused. Even worse, if the bad guys are gradually introduced instead of having a simple long fight from start to end with a precise target, it's already too much story (although honestly, you have to be naive not to get from start who's the mastermind, but well, those neurons ...). Yup, the movie is long. It has two hours and a half. And yes, the story is short. But wow, there is a story, not just some 10 minutes long explosions linked by dumb scripted lines a la Michael Bay. Ok, we have some secondary threads which are a bit more than necessary, but they still connect somehow with the story. The script is, again, quite discrete in some nuances, with a dark to grim tone here and there to tell you that "life in the wild west was wild indeed", and some surreal scenes thrown from time to time (very nicely integrated, but that's more a matter of taste). All these aren't doing anything else than underlining again, clearly, for who has eyes to see, that what's given to the viewer is a story, a fairytale, not a western.

Technically, the movie is superb. I hope I'm not mistaking and there's a version I don't know about, but what I've seen is the perfect example that you can live without 3D (I'm wondering if this is one of the hidden reasons for which it took the bashing, but I already start to feel that I'm generating a conspiracy theory). The camera work is above everything I've seen in a movie with some solid action since long ago. I don't even know what other comparable example to give. The scenes are shot in such a way that, in 2D, to give you an intense feeling of movement in space. I'm not even getting into filters and light, but that's something I'm used with from Verbinski since I've seen "The Ring". I don't know though how much is his touch or the cinematographer's, Bojan Bazelli. Getting to the audio area, I'm trying to convince myself lately that Hans Zimmer starts to get overrated for the last scores he did, but apparently I'm again wrong. It's indeed a soundtrack that reuses stuff, with clear influences from Morricone, and of course an arrangement for the Wilhelm Tell overture, but it fits so well the scenes where it's played that I can't say anything bad about it.

To give an example of another movie that gets slightly closer as feeling, probably the best one is "The Mask of Zorro" from '98 with Banderas. Not that much because it's another masked hero, but more for the comical element and the deviation from the standard western. Something else .. it's the type of movie that you should take as an exit from the real life, and enjoy the story as much as you can = a reason for I really don't see a problem with the length. It's not a story to put your mind at work, but also not one to make you roll your eyes at each overly dumb line you hear, or to give you ideas to check your watch for timing the action scenes because you're anyway bored of them and that's the best option you have. It is though a story witty and nice enough to keep you there. Maybe it's not "Star Wars", "Indiana Jones", "Back to the Future" or "Neverending Story". Neither "Prince of Persia" or "John Carter" didn't get there, but I hope that Disney will keep releasing such critic failures, even though it ends up losing money with them. Because besides these, the surprising exception "Pacific Rim", and obviously "Star Trek", I don't remember any other blockbuster in the last years to leave me at the end with the same feeling of "my brain got trapped in a story for the last hours, and it was nice ;)".

Rating: 5 out of 5 (to make some justice that I let myself influenced by the rating and I didn't see the movie in cinema, and it deserves that)