Express & Star

Big budget blockbuster is plumbing new Depp-ths

Sometimes, a film comes along carrying enough baggage to fill a luxury cruise liner. The Lone Ranger, having laboured its way onto our screens after multiple rewrites and restarts, is just such a project.

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So, does it sink, or does it swim in this year's sea of big-budget action heroes?

Well, in truth, it does a little of both – but ultimately, the unevenness of the story will leave the viewer feeling underwhelmed, and rather confused.

The story begins in 1933 San Francisco, where a young cowboy-crazy boy (Cook) visits a wild west fairground attraction, and runs into ageing North American indian Tonto (Depp).

With no-one else around, he begins to recount the story of how, more than half a century earlier, the legend of the Lone Ranger came to pass.

In a hazy flashback broken only half a dozen times by Tonto's narration, we join handsome lawyer John Reid (Hammer) in 1869 Texas as he travels on the newly constructed railroad controlled by Latham Cole (Wilkinson).

Limping along – Helena Bonham Carter's character has a false leg

Soon after, John is reunited with his brother, Texas Ranger Dan Reid (Dale), and pretty sister-in-law Rebecca (Wilson) – who has clearly long held a flame for him.

When brutal outlaw Butch Cavendish (Fichtner) escapes custody, Dan leads the search party and he reluctantly drags John along as his deputy so they can spend quality time together.

But the chase ends in carnage, and John wakes from a bullet wound to meet Tonto, who also has own good reason to want Cavendish dead.

The Commanche encourages John to find the hero within by donning a mask, and together they hunt down the outlaw, uncovering a plot to set the Indians and the American military at one another's throats, and taking a small yet important detour via the brothel run by no-nonsense madam, Red Harrington (Bonham Carter), whose false leg fires real bullets.

Johnny Depp has clearly, once again, been given carte blanche to create a quixotic, comedy character from the inner workings of his memory. This may be called The Lone Ranger, but it's not about the masked man at all.

Frankly, that's probably just as well, because there's zero chemistry between Depp and Hammer; the latter coming across as far too dim and lightweight to garner our sympathies.

At times, particularly in the opening half hour, some of the cinematography is beautiful, evoking famous John Ford-style scenes from classic westerns of yesteryear making the Wild West look mighty fine

And in other moments, a couple of flashes of dark comedy could have been tugged straight out of a Quentin Tarantino tale.But amidst such high points are some serious lulls in a film which, at nearly two hours and 20 minutes, is at least half an hour too long.

The middle section, in particular, drags aimlessly as the love-hate buddy relationship between the Lone Ranger and Tonto fails to catch fire.

Most of the film's estimated 250 million dollar budget clearly went on two outrageous railroad action scenes, which to their credit include some tremendous stunt work – but are also blighted by several frankly shocking additions of digital effects, and an oddly judged decision to bombard us with five minutes of the non-stop famous Lone Ranger theme tune.

Fans hoping for a rootin' tootin' reinvention of the masked avenger will be disappointed.

This smacked of a project where too many people were allowed to inject their own views . . . which isn't wise, when they evidently didn't share the same vision.

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