Ain't Your Papa's Lone Ranger (but I liked it)

I finally got around to seeing Disney’s The Lone Ranger, and to my surprise I really liked it.

Now keep in mind that I liked it in the way that I liked the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight movies.  For those I put aside three decades of knowledge of Batman and instead chose to see the series as movies about a troubled man named Bruce Wayne who, while baring a resemblance to Batman, is someone else entirely.  Real Dark Knight fans know that Bruce Wayne doesn’t really exist; he’s just the public face that Batman uses occasionally. 

With that in mind I didn’t look for the Lone Ranger I know and love: the nameless, faceless knight of the sagebrush moving between masks and disguises, having long ago left the name John Ried behind.  Nah, you can tell right away that’s not where the film is going, so why not let it stand on its own?

It’s fun. It’s zany.  It’s occasionally touching.  Armie Hammer does a fine job a wet behind the ear, choking on trail dust Ranger finding his way.  It’s never quite explained how he becomes such a raging bad butt so quickly, but we can almost look past that.  Johnny Depp is… well, he’s Johnny Depp, who has gone from a deep, multifaceted actor to a one trick pony, but it is a pony that he rides well.  His dialogues with Silver were a highlight of the movie.

The Lone Ranger does a fine job, right up to the big crazy action sequence that takes up ¼ of the movie and probably ½ the budget.  I wish film makers would save the budget and just give us more story.  When you think about it, what’s the best end of film action sequence in a western?  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which is really just three guys staring at each other to cool music for five minutes.  Epic.

Bad Ass Bass Reeves

Bad Ass of the Week brings back the western again with a profile of Texas Ranger Bass Reeves.  Here’s a sneak peak:

After the Thirteenth Amendment made the south a little less suck-tastic for black people, Bass Reeves left his adoptive home with the Indians, bought a home in Arkansas, got married, had like ten kids, and lived for a while as a farmer and a horse breeder. That was cool and all, but Bass Reeves was the kind of guy who was always looking to serve up a nice warm knuckle sandwich to anything capable of feeling pain and he wasn't happy living the boring life of successful rancher. So when the infamous hardass "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker put out a call for U.S. Marshals in 1875, Bass was one of the first volunteers ready and willing to bring lethal hordes of armed-and-dangerous felons to justice. Thanks to his mammoth physical strength, tracking skills, intimate knowledge of the terrain, and language proficiency, he easily earned a spot on the force.

Read more here.