Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Tonto and What's-His-Name

We went to the Beach Movie Bistro for opening night of The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the masked man. I had high hopes, but it was weak. Too violent to be fun--one of the bad guys cuts out someone's heart, with lots of blood--but later on it's almost cartoonish, with the Spirit Horse casually standing on a roof, the madame with the ivory leg, and infinite-six-shooters. Tonto is eccentric-to-crazy, which is fine--eccentric people are more memorable than normal people--but he outshines the supposed main character.
The Ranger starts off bland and clueless, and never really gets a clue. When he tracks down a villain, he insists on "bringing them back to justice", but when he finds out that   the local political boss is in cahoots with the villain and no justice will be done, he doesn't really even think through the situation, much less come to any decision on what to do about it. He doesn't want to carry a gun. When he's persuaded to carry one anyway, he then doesn't want to shoot anyone; but when his first shot ricochets and kills two bad guys, he doesn't have any misgivings about it, nor does he rationalize why violence is sometimes necessary.  Overall, a wimpy character. There was no chemistry with the Love Interest.
Pass.

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