The Lone Ranger

The Bruckheimer filters rather spoil the otherwise convincing western atmosphere served up to us so successfully by Verbinski. The struggle with this childish, sometimes infantile and senile (the narrator forgets to tell us all the details because he’s an old, crazy grampa) story is uphill. Good ideas here and there and the absolutely amazing train chase save the reputation of this movie. Hammer doesn’t stand out, Depp doesn’t disappoint and the only performance rally worth remembering is William Fichtner as an unscrupulous bad guy who laughs through his teeth. Zimmer’s music is again the tops and you can tell that he really enjoyed doing this movie. (10/07/2013)

The most underrated blockbuster of the year. Admittedly uneven in pace, with occasional dullness in the middle passage and some forced humour courtesy of a goofy Depp, but otherwise full of playfulness, likeable exuberance, unprecedented production design and top-notch choreography in several action passages. And please, screw the fact that Depp is just recycling Jack Sparrow, I’m not going to deny excellent craftsmanship because of that. (10/05/2013)

I can't remember the last time I had such a great time in the movie theatre. Gore Verbinski lived up to his reputation as a megalomaniac with a sense of humor, for which I am truly grateful. As well as for all the metric tons of references (not even Tarantino could squeeze that many tasteful quotes from Leone's films, from Once Upon a Time in the West to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to A Fistful of Dynamite, into all his films combined, not to mention the allusions to The Wild Bunch and many other classics of the genre)! The story has everything it should have and is very easily accessible even to people who don't know the Lone Ranger at all. The villains are extra negative, the two main positive heroes are likable, their (not only) verbal shootouts are excellent, Johnny Depp's every grimace is priceless (say what you will, critics). The finale of "Tonto on the Machine" is thrilling, extremely imaginative, funny and suspenseful, but I cannot agree with those who say that it is preceded by two hours of boredom. Bah! I'd much rather see a second installment of The Lone Ranger than a fifth Pirates, which has already burned out once without Verbinski. So, perhaps... (07/09/2013)

Cowboys and Indians for the twenty-first century pulling out all the stops; the bad ones and the good ones. And the dozens (dozens!) of neat, not immediately obvious allusions (the cicadas and the birds in the bush, the umbrella in the desert etc.), paradoxically more than in Rango, prove better than anything else that the creating team didn’t treat this as just another product. And, yes, this is unarguably “just" the Pirates of the Caribbean in Western garb. However, it should be said that, along with the first Pirates, this is the best to come out of that “series". (07/05/2013)

A small big man smokes a hallucinogenic peace pipe with Pirates of the Caribbean and a mute grotesque. A movie that looks like it's being told by a senile crazy Indian... because it's being told by a senile crazy Indian who also likes to listen to himself talk. The middle passage is a little weak, but otherwise I had a great time. Verbinski sometimes drowns in beloved references, but his "meta-westerns" are smarter than most genre competitors. That guy is not Tonto. (11/02/2013)