SPOILERS AHEAD
It opens, in context of the movie that will follow, in the future. The first image we see is a balloon preparing to disappear into an endless sky as the child who lost it still reaches out as if it will float back to him. This balloon is making its way into the “future,” a term we will hear a lot in Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger. That, and “progress.” From what we see during this opening scene, it looks as if much progress has been made. The time is 1933 and the setting is San Francisco, a city we will learn once the movie flashes back to its main period of 1869, is the ultimate destination of the railroad, which is freshly under construction.
The Lone Ranger begins at a carnival as a young boy, dressed as a masked cowboy, wanders into an exhibit of the wild west of yesteryear. Of all the “attractions,” he decides to stop at “The Noble Savage,” a backhanded attempt for our muddled history to give some dignity to the people we invaded (and a hint suggesting will soon see who the real “savages” are). The Native American on display is very old, frozen in place and broken out of his trance (or brought to life?) by the sight of the masked kid who he mistakes for his former outlaw partner. This is our first clue that the movie will question (and toy with) reality.
The Noble Savage is of course, Tonto (Johnny Depp), and he serves as the unreliable narrator of the story. I say this because he begins near the end, details from the present somehow end up in the past, some key pieces are left out entirely, and there are places where it feels as if he’s making the story up as he goes. I could note that it’s made more fantastical because a child is the audience, but who’s to say the narrator even acknowledges that. These elements to the storytelling fit in with the fact that the character of Tonto lost his mind as a child and so now that’s he is elderly, what’s left of it is gone for good (though whether in past or present, he never forgets to feed the dead bird perched on top of his head).
The movie refers to the past sparingly, only if the kid has a question about Tonto’s story. It’s crucial, I think, that Tonto is the narrator, as we need to see this period of American “progress” through the eyes of someone who was negatively affected by it. There was much controversy surrounding the casting of Johnny Depp as a Native American, but it seems to have been done in irony (I’d like to believe too that it’s because Gore Verbinski was paying tribute to Depp’s presence in Jim Jarmusch’s exceptional, Dead Man. I am certainly not the first to make this connection). One of the first observations the kid makes is that he thought The Lone Ranger and Tonto were the “good” guys, and the movie will spend a majority of its time asking what that even means at this point in American history. The question of what constitutes “justice” is up for debate too, as one man sees it as being determined by the court of law while others see it being answered by a bullet.
The masked hero of the movie is John Reed (Armie Hammer) a district attorney who, when asked to pray with a group of Presbyterians, holds up a copy of Treatsie of Government by John Locke and declares it is his “Bible.” The Lone Ranger proves to have a cynical view of religion and government, as they both fail those who try to do what’s right. The only principles that end up prevailing are the ones adopted by the heroes themselves. But like the narrator, I’m getting ahead of myself here. John begins the movie as the classic naïve, stick-in-the-mud, only to have everything he believes in challenged and then crippled. His brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), is the opposite, a confident lawman who takes down his opponents however necessary (Tonto sees him as a great “warrior”).
The movie’s thrilling opening sequence sees the escape of nasty villain Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) after his minions rescue him from confinement on a train. The railroad will be one of the key characters in The Lone Ranger, as a tool for the wealthy white men planning westward expansion, and as a way to wipe out the Native Americans they’ve signed a peace treaty with (though we can see the Native Americans are skeptical to believe what these men promise them). Control of the railroad means control of the land, which means spreading more (white) people to populate the rest of the country (“…power that makes emperors and kings look like fools. Whoever controls this, controls the future.”). Real allies are a dime a dozen, but Dan Reed is one of them, so when he’s brutally murdered by Cavendish (he cuts out and eats Dan’s heart, fitting since Dan is pure and the destruction of his heart is the biggest defilement possible), John reluctantly takes his place. Tonto discovers John is a “Spirit Walker,” a man who has been to the “other side” and now cannot be killed in battle. He insists John wear a mask made from his brother’s vest with “eyes cut by the bullets that killed him.”
Of course, John believes at first that when he finds Cavendish, he needs to be tried in court while Tonto, who also has an ugly past with Cavendish, believes he just needs to be shot for his crimes. John learns about Tonto’s history when they are brought into a Comanche village and the chief (Saginaw Grant) shares Tonto’s backstory, which is beautifully and hauntingly realized through voiceover (the gravity of the chief’s voice adds extra weight and perfectly complements Hans Zimmer’s score) and dynamic visuals. Tonto’s madness comes into thorough focus for us now, and we fully understand his desire for revenge. Depp’s appearance is melancholy and quietly chilling, his cracked makeup acting as an effective symbol for his fractured psyche.
The Lone Ranger is, first and foremost, a western (I was pleasantly surprised to find that Slant Magazine put it at number 87 on their list of the 100 Greatest Westerns of All Time) and director Gore Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli have crafted one of the best looking movies I have seen. Their influences are vast and on display during every luscious frame, from the landscapes, to the skylines, to the sunsets. The occasionally broad comedy and huge action also pays tribute to movies from a variety of eras, and it’s all staged so expertly that I was able to ignore the crazy tonal shifts, if not miss them altogether. Verbinski throws a lot of elements into the pot here, and though the movie is a huge blockbuster aiming to thrill, it still takes the underlying themes I’ve discussed to this point with alarming sincerity. The question for many viewers will be whether they’re able to go back and forth and not lose their concentration in the process.
If there’s one consistent through line in the movie, it’s the mounting anticipation that the peace treaty between the Native Americans and the white men will be broken and lead to a battle. No mystery is ever made that the wealthy railroad tycoons staged the raids on their own villages to make it look like Native Americans did it, all because they needed that land for their iron rails. This is progress, remember? The movie’s most unflinching sequence hits right before the bombastic climax as the Native Americans stage an attack and are mowed down by a gatling gun (we even see the chief get stabbed in the heart). Showing this massacre brought a great deal of heat on the movie, but I found it to be a pretty bold move. If you’re going to profile one of the ugly pieces of American history, you might as well go all in. The Lone Ranger is one of those movies that has its cake and then gleefully eats it, as we see at the start of the finale when the very same gatling gun is used to kill a bunch of US soldiers and rich white men (the movie surely has the largest body count and most unsettling violence ever in a Disney release).
Speaking of that finale, it is well worth the wait. The Lone Ranger runs a whopping 150 minutes, the last twenty of which make up one of the most showstopping action sequences I have ever seen. If you are a western fan, then it’s safe to say you’ve experienced a train chase before, but never quite like this one. It’s a seamless marriage of jaw dropping action and Buster Keaton-esque comedy, and even though it caps with the death of the villains, there is still someone just as sinister to take their place. After saving the day, John is given an award and told, “It’s time to take off the mask” and “Always nice to have a lawman on the side of progress.” Of course, neither of those statements ring true for John, who must let the mask speak to what he’s learned true justice is and that he’s on a completely different side.
If the movie has a weak spot, it’s in the female characters. John has a love interest, Dan’s widow, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson), but unfortunately, she’s reduced to a damsel in distress, as is her son. There’s also Helena Bonham Carter, so good as the madam of a brothel. Too bad then that she’s only in two scenes, though in both she gets to showcase her ivory leg that doubles as a gun! When we first meet her, there’s a nice visual touch paying tribute to who she was before the leg was lost. Given the movie’s epic length, surely a little room could have been cleared to give her more to do. Her and Rebecca, for that matter.
The Lone Ranger fittingly concludes where it began, with Tonto and the boy. Tonto has packed his bag and is dressed in a suit, ready to escape his stereotyped prison and return to the home that was stolen from him and the other Native Americans not long before. Before he goes, the boy asks him if the story he just heard is really all true to which Tonto replies, “That is for you to decide.” We take a certain ownership of the stories that mean the most of us, giving them the texture required to make them our own and to hopefully wow our audience into believing every word they hear (And for Tonto, that means being a hero and getting his past due vengeance). The Lone Ranger honors this tradition in a wholly unique way while still lovingly paying tribute to the movies that inspired it. To get all of that and then a final shot of Tonto walking through a valley, into a future that belongs to and is decided by no one but him, is the crowning definition of cinematic bliss.
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