The Lone Ranger (Verbinski, 2013)

It's horribly written and edited, but The Lone Ranger remains a wallop of a good time.

Produced by the team behind The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, The Lone Ranger will certainly appeal to viewers looking for mindless adventure. It has a very long runtime, but overall keeps the action moving so that audiences do not notice. The multitude of actors are committed, the direction is solid, and the plot is unnecessarily complex.

Overall, a typical Gore Verbinski film.

The Lone Ranger is faultily narrated by Tonto (Johnny Depp), a Native American warrior who recounts the story of the Lone Ranger to a young boy. Basically, John Reid (Armie Hammer) is a man of law and justice, committed to the system and naive in the ways of the real world. He returns from the city to his Wild West home, where a dangerous criminal named Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) has recently escaped. When Reid goes after the criminal with his sheriff brother's deputes, the rangers are ambushed by Butch's goons. All of the rangers are killed, and Reid is left for dead.

Tonto finds Reid and, believing him to be a Spirit Walker, saves the lawyer from the desert. Reid wants to bring Butch to justice, while Tonto has his own ulterior motives behind wanting to find the criminal. The two team up, Reid dons a mask, and they set out to bring justice to the old West.

The writing is never in focus. The actions of the characters do not make much sense, and the story progresses rapidly where it show go slow and glacially where it should go fast. The writer knew all the characters well enough to do justice to them, but just tries to fit too much in at one time.

The biggest problem with The Lone Ranger is in it's core narration: the movie blames many of its plot holes on the fact that Tonto is an old man who forgets things. This leaves the audience shaking their heads in disbelief as Reid and Tonto are constantly placed in ridiculous situations that have no resolutions. One minute, one man's in a jail cell, and the next, he's out in the open. It remains a combination of poor editing and writing that is never truly resolved.

But the target audience of The Lone Ranger will not care about editing or directional issues, so for those people, the film indeed remains enjoyable throughout. It does have a lot of characters, but all are developed enough to avoid confusion. Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp lead the cast with enjoyable chemistry and great stuntwork.

The Lone Ranger remains a fun tale, not very well made, but highly entertaining. It makes viewers feel like they are young boys sitting in front of a ten-inch TV screen, smiling over each explosion and gunshot.

Do not go in expecting to see a work of art, kemosabe, and just enjoy the movie for what it is.

Three out of five stars.