Check it Out! - The Lone Ranger

I recently re-watched "The Lone Ranger".  And I mean the 2013 version, not the old, old classic version.

It's hard to believe it's been a year since the former came out.  And I still don't get why it received such a bad rap from critics.  I mean, yes, it does have its downsides, but overall I think it was very well done.  Here's a quick list of what I see to be the pros and the cons.

Pros:

• The action.  There is nothing that gets your adrenalin pumping like a couple of horsemen galloping at top speed with their pistols blazing while "The William Tell Overture" is being played in the background by a full orchestra.  But even if they didn't have all those components, the various action sequences are very impressive (for example, the Lone Ranger riding Silver along the top of a moving train), with some of the stunts being a bit reminiscent of "The Pirates of the Caribbean".
• Armie Hammer in a Stetson.                                                                                                            
  
  
                                                                                                                                                     'Nuff said. :)

• The acting and character development.  I personally think the best acting job in the movie was done by William Fichtner, the guy who played the nastiest and crustiest of the bad guys (Butch Cavendish).  From watching an interview clip with him and the other stars, it really showed what a great job he did.  Also, the way you see both the Lone Ranger and Tonto "grow up" during the movie is well presented.  They were both adults, but they hadn't quite matured into real men yet.  It is also really great how they made Tonto into an almost dual-main character along with the Lone Ranger, going into his back story and showing the two of them forming a partnership instead of what Tonto had been during the radio and TV series (which at the beginning at least was just someone for the Lone Ranger to talk to.  I guess it's kind of hard to keep a radio audience interested when the main character can only talk to his horse).
• The humor.  This is also a bit reminiscent of "Pirates of the Caribbean", with snappy dialog and good one-liners.  (I think the director or somebody on the production end of this movie also worked on the "PotC" movies, which is why there are some similarities).
 

Cons:

• The movie is rated PG-13 for a reason.  Actually three main reasons.  

                  1) There is some gore.  They do show some pretty realistic-looking blood in parts of the movie, and one of the bad guys practices cannibalism.  They don't actually SHOW him doing it (thank heavens), but they do enough implying of it (aka seeing him with a knife, "juicy" sound effects, and one of his companions vomiting) that it's almost as bad as if they did.  There is also one part with some carnivorous rabbits, which is super creepy. 
                 2)  There is some promiscuity.  At one point in the movie the Lone Ranger and Tonto visit a "house of ill-fame" that is located in a "hell on wheels" (a moving town that followed the railroad crews) to get some information from the owner about the bad guys, and at other points there are innuendos about other "rated" stuff.
                3)  The language isn't the cleanest.  The profanity actually isn't any worse than some PG rated movies, but it's still there.

• There is some kind of weird Indian "religious" stuff thrown in, and Tonto talks about having visions from the Great Spirit and nature being "out of balance" and some other stuff like that.  You can kind of ignore it, but it still might bother some people.
• There is one fairly important historical inaccuracy.  The movie is somewhat focused around the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, but it's also supposed to take place in Texas.  The Transcontinental RR went from Omaha, NE to Sacramento, CA.  There is no way it could ever have gone through Texas.  They do have the site of the two halves joining correct, Promontory Point, UT, but that isn't anywhere near Texas, either.  This is the kind of thing that will only bother you if you're a history buff like I am.

Overall, I think the good outweighs the bad.  Here is a synopsis of the storyline (I apologize that it's a bit long, but the movie is close to two and a half hours so a lot happens in it).  Since the movie was done in a bunch of flashbacks, I'm going to do this mostly in chronological order and not quite in the order it comes in in the movie.

The movie starts in 1933 at a fair in San Francisco.  A young boy dressed as the Lone Ranger walks through a large tent that has a wide variety of Wild West themed displays, and he runs into an ancient Native American man who claims to be the real Tonto.  The boy doesn’t believe him at first, so the old man starts to tell him the true story of the Lone Ranger.

The movie flashes back to Texas in the year 1869, and young attorney John Reid is on a train headed home after being in the east for nine years.  Also on the train is notorious outlaw Butch Cavendish, who is being taken back to the town of Colby as a prisoner to be hung.  In the boxcar with the shackled Cavendish is another prisoner, an Indian (Tonto).  Cavendish’s gang ambushes the train, and when John hears footsteps on the roof of his train car he follows them to the car where the prisoners are held and sees through a crack in the door that Cavendish has killed his guards and is about to kill his fellow prisoner.  John breaks in the door, and after a lot of back and forth which is greatly complicated by the fact that he doesn't believe in violence, John winds up handcuffed beside Tonto while Cavendish and his gang ride away from the runaway train.  Through the open door of the car they see the station of Colby whip by, and see John’s older brother, Dan, waiting there with the rest of his fellow Texas Rangers to get Cavendish off of the train.  Tonto is able to get their chains unhooked from the floorboards and they escape to the roof of the train together.  From up there they see that they are nearing the end of the completed railroad and that the train is going to crash.  Dan and his men catch up with the train and he, Tonto and John unhook the passenger cars from the engine, which can’t be stopped, and it carries Tonto and John off towards the end of the line.  They surprisingly survive the following crash, and then John tries to re-arrest Tonto, but Tonto’s having none of it and tries to get away.  But Dan and his men show up and stop him and take them both back to town.

During all of this, you get the impression that there is some kind of strain between the two brothers, although there is affection as well, which is seen much more a bit later.  You learn what that strain is when they get back to town and John sees Rebecca, his old sweetheart and Dan’s wife.  He also meets his nephew Danny for the first time, as well as a man named Latham Cole, who is the head honcho of the railroad doings in the area.  Dan gets his band of Rangers together to go out after Cavendish and deputizes John so that he can/has to join them.  As they are riding along, they notice a white horse way off in the distance, and Dan tells John that the Indians called it the “spirit horse”, and jokes that that meant that John was going to die soon.  After riding for more than a day, the posse approaches a canyon, and after sending their scout up into it they deside to risk it and start to ride through.  It was a big mistake.  They are caught in the middle of an ambush and all of their companions (except for the scout, who is a traitor) are killed.  Dan almost makes it out, but after John’s horse is shot Dan goes back to get him and gets shot himself.  Then while John is trying to drag Dan out he gets shot and they fall side by side.  Then Cavendish and his men ride up. 

The next few minutes of the movie is a part that you can fast forward through, because…you remember I said that one of the bad guys practices cannibalism?  This is the spot where they show it.  And you won’t miss anything important.  You just learn that Cavendish and Dan have a bit of a history, and then Cavendish cuts out the still alive Dan’s heart and…and you also learn that John is still alive, but only subconsciously, because you see one of his eyes crack open while all the horribleness is going on.   When you see Cavendish and his men leave the canyon, you can quit fast-forwarding and get back to watching.  Which is exactly what Tonto had been doing from high up on the canyon rim.  Tonto digs graves for the Rangers, but before he covers the bodies with dirt, he sees the Spirit Horse approach John’s grave and stand next to it.  Tonto tries to talk the horse into bringing Dan “back to life” instead of the “useless” John, because, like everyone who’s watching the movie, he had become enamored with Dan the first time he'd seen him in action.  But nope, the horse keeps going back to John, who still isn’t quite dead.   So finally Tonto gives in, does what the horse wants and gets John healthy again.  After John has recovered, Tonto explains that a vision had told him that a “spirit walker”, someone who cannot be killed in battle, would help him on his quest to get revenge on the men who killed his family.  John is about as thrilled with the idea of the partnership as Tonto is, but they both realize that they don’t have much choice.  Tonto makes a mask out of Dan’s vest for John to wear so that no one will recognize him, because, as he explains to John, a dead man strikes more fear into people than a live one.

John and Tonto head out to a hell on wheels to get some information about why the Rangers' scout might have betrayed them.  After a lot of finagling that doesn’t really work, they gain the wary trust of a saloon owner called Red who has her own personal reasons to hate Cavendish.  She tells them that Dan and the scout had come in some time back and had a big argument about something they had found out in the desert, and that they paid her with a chunk of raw silver.  While they are talking a mob forms because someone had seen Tonto, and because of that John and Tonto learn that there had been some Indian raids along the border of the Indian/settler lands.  This makes John scared for Rebecca and Danny’s safety on their farm, so he and Tonto escape (barely) and make their way to the homestead.  They get there to find it in smoldering ruins, and after examining the dead body of the hired hand, Tonto proclaims that the raid was not done by Indians at all.  They soon find proof of that by discovering a few of Cavendish’s men in Indian get-up who had stuck around to plunder. Thanks to a very lucky shot, John kills two of the men, and the third one escapes to tell Cavendish that there is still one Ranger around who is mad and bent on revenge.  When that man gets to Cavendish’s camp, you learn that Rebecca and Danny are being held prisoner by the outlaws.  Cavendish then tells the Rangers' old scout to take them and shoot them.  The man can’t bring himself to do it, so he tells them to run.  While they are running a man on horseback comes up and shoots the scout.

Meanwhile, John and Tonto have headed out into the desert to try to find Cavendish.  Instead, they find railroad tracks, which must have been discovered earlier by Dan and which violate the treaty with the Indians.  After they discover the tracks, they are taken prisoner by a band of Comanches.  While in their camp, John learns the truth of Tonto’s past.  As a boy, Tonto had rescued two white men in the desert and had ended up showing them some mountains which were rich with silver.  The men killed all of Tonto’s family to keep the mountains a secret.  One of those men was Cavendish.  Tonto, unable to live with what he had done, became a little crazy and made up stories for himself to help him cope with it.  The Indians end up leaving John and Tonto behind as they go out to fight the cavalry troop that has been sent out to pay them back for the raids that they had supposedly done on settlements.  John and Tonto go to find the mountains where the silver is, and as a result they find Cavendish’s camp.  After a successful ambush on the camp, which is followed by a big argument where John confronts Tonto about his true past, John rips off his mask in disgust and takes Cavendish back to civilization to face trial.  He finds Cole’s railroad camp and, seeing Cole as a pillar of civilization and progress, hands Cavendish over to him to be incarcerated.  But soon after John is invited into Cole’s private railroad car, he learns several important things.  One, that Cole was the other man who killed Tonto’s people; two, that he doesn’t intend on seeing Cavendish punished because they are still partners; three, that he has gotten the commander of the cavalry on his side so John has no one in the law to turn to; four, that he is holding Rebecca and Danny prisoner; and five, that Cole intends to make sure that John doesn’t get in his way like his brother had tried to do.  Soon John finds himself facing a firing squad.  But thanks to Tonto doing a little work behind the scenes and the Comanches deciding at that very moment to attack, John is able to make it out alive and escape from Cole.  After a harrowing escape through some railroad tunnels and a river, both he and Tonto come to live-changing realizations.  As Tonto watches the remnants of the Comanches final stand float down the river in the darkness, the memories of his childhood come back to him and he has to accept what he did all that long time ago.  And John realizes that just because something is done in the name of the law does not make it right.  As he says to Tonto, “If these men represent the law, I’d rather be an outlaw.”  Tonto hands him his mask.  And they set to work on a plan to destroy Cole’s empire. 

They decide to stage their attack on the day that the two halves of the Transcontinental Railroad are joined, and, with some help from Red, they set off a chain of events which end in Cole, Cavendish, and the cavalry captain all getting their just reward.  After everything is over, the railroad offers John a job, saying that the railroad can always use a lawman on its side.  John declines, says goodbye to Rebecca and Danny, and rides off with Tonto, the two of them bickering about what name John should go by.
 

While the movie isn’t the best ever, or even in my top 5, it does hold a special place in my heart.  Here’s why.  Back before the movie was first released, I saw quite a bit of advertising about it, and from what I saw I became pretty interested.  So I told my dad about it and suggested that we go see it sometime.  At the time he was battling melanoma, so he said, “We’ll have to wait and see how I’m doing when it gets to our local $2.50 theater.  If I’m up to it then, definitely!”  In September my dad passed away.  During all the running around my mom and I had to do afterwards, I happened to notice that the theater had gotten the Lone Ranger.  So I asked my mom if she wanted to go (even though she isn’t really into that kind of movie) just as a way to escape for a couple of hours.  She agreed, and while she didn’t like the movie as much as I did, she did think that parts of it were well done.  And it did (unintentionally) give us something to laugh about.  After the movie was over and we were talking about it, I happened to say that “Dan’s death just rips your heart out!”  My mom looked at me and said, “That wasn’t a very good choice of words!”  Oops! :)