# The Lone Ranger - Blu-ray Revew



## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13994[/img] 
*Title: The Lone Ranger* 

*Movie:* :2stars:
*Video:* :5stars:
*Audio:* :5stars: 
*Extras:* :2stars: 

*HTS Overall Score:*82




[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13995[/img]*Summary*
The Lone Ranger was our Superman before Superman existed. A lone vigilante who was seemingly invincible against injustice, who stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A man who could overcome any odds with the help of his trusty sidekick Tonto and his horse silver. Armed with silver bullets he was the paragon of virtue, a man who never took a life, but still was able to overcome his adversaries. Someone we all wanted to be, something we were not. Most superheroes in the origin times weren’t the most realistic of people. They were the embodiment of what we WANTED to be, the purity and righteousness of an avenging angel, with the strength of a dozen men. A man without the flaws that we as humans have to bear. 

The Western itself has been in decline for decades, except for the rare title, such as “Django Unchained” and the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit” remake, Westerns have become a dying breed and are usually rather risky. Action comedies have also been on the decline ever since the late 90’s. Gone are the days of “Tango and Cash”, where guns, knives, explosions and one liners would mean instant profit for the studios. Which is why I sit here and scratch my head when I see that Disney poured over 250 + million dollars into a Western/Action/Comedy. The only thing I can think of is that they saw a reuniting of Johnny Depp, Gore Verbinski, and Jerry Bruckheimer and hoped for the same dollar signs that the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies raked in. Coming in at just under $260,000,000 taken worldwide, we can see that bet did not pan out for them.

Now, I’m not one to judge a movie based on its box office appeal. “Iron Man 3” made more money than most businesses see in a full year during its theatrical run and I loathed it, while “Pacific Rim” was one of my favorites of the year and barely made enough to get a profit after expenses. I loved “John Carter” to death, so when I heard Disney was remaking “The Lone Ranger” and it was going through the same marketing hell that “John Carter” was going through, I thought to myself “hmmm, maybe lightning does strike twice”. Unfortunately that’s not the case with “The Lone Ranger”. 

What we have here is a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It starts out with a young boy, years and years in the future, conversing with a talking statue of Tonto (THE Tonto, in fact), who regales the boy of the real story behind the masked man. It seems that John Reid (Armie Hammer) wasn’t always a Texas Ranger. Here he’s an idealistic lawyer, coming out west to become the new chief prosecutor, where his brother Dan (James Badge Dale) lives with his wife Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and their son, Danny (Bryant Prince). John is a pacifist by nature and sees no need for violence, ignorant of the villains who disregard that nice little thought. Notorious outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) happens to be on that same train as John is along with Tonto (Johnny Depp) where all of their fates are changed forever. Cavendish escapes custody and John must be deputized as a Texas Ranger (for some strange reason) by his brother Dan and ride the outlaw down. The only problem is that Butch has an inside man setting up the rangers for their ultimate demise. Ambushed and left for dead, John and the other rangers are found by Tonto. Digging 7 graves, Tonto is about to bury their remains when, Silver, The Lone Ranger’s trusty steed, shows up. It appears that not only is Silver a fantastic steed, he’s also a spirit animal, meaning that he can pull someone back from the dead. Drawing John Reid back to the living Tonto confides in the Lone Ranger that he is also seeking justice against Butch Cavendish and the two of them team up to take him down.

[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13996[/img]
So far it’s a bit different than what I’m used to with a Lone Ranger origins story. John is a bit more of snob and barely qualified to hold a gun, but I can go with that, Tonto on the other hand is just out of control as Captain Jack Tonto. Creating a weird blend of “Pirates” lunacy with some stereotypical native American traits we get a bizarre blending of the two that resembles a bit too much of Captain Jack Sparrow for my liking. It seems that Johnny Depp decided to go overboard with his crazy persona, like he does some times, and no one had the guts to reel him back in and give him some solid direction. It’s almost as if they thought “look, he did this for Pirates, and look how everyone loved him! Let’s hope it’s the same thing here”. It also doesn’t help that the movie really doesn’t know what it wants to be. Sometimes it’s bouncing around with crazy antics, Tonto talking to the horse, wisecracks about the Lone Ranger’s lack of combat experience, jokes about being scared of cats etc, and then trying to draw the film into a morality tale of greed and deception, where Tonto is mentally unbalanced due to the great tragedy that befell his village 20 odd years ago. Then it tries to become a good ole western with lots of shoot em up moments and a thrilling train ride chase (which actually was REALLY impressive). If they had trimmed out maybe 20-30 minutes of the middle it would have felt a bit more cohesive, but as it stands the film is an utter mess. This bears no resemblance to the original characters except in name only. Armie can’t act his way out of a paper bag and the script reduces John Reid to a bumbling incompetent character, and Tonto is no longer his sidekick, but a more politically correct partner who we are supposed to feel sorry for because of the big bad evil white man who’s twirling his mustache behind the scenes while drinking a glass of imported Cognac. I understand that not every old time character can be brought into this modern world exactly as he was written decades and decades ago, but keeping at least some respect for the what came before is a must. Here they made fun of the most famous parts of the original series and did so without giving a nod of respect, but of derision. The times when the William Tell Overture blared across the soundstage didn’t elicit that same sense of excitement they were hoping for, but seemed raw and very out of place. 

As I said, I can live with alterations to a character and story, not everything can be translated to a more modern audience exactly as they originally were written, but what makes or breaks a film is how it’s put together, a lot of things can be overlooked in a review if the story is tight, cohesive and creates a satisfying ending. Unfortunately none of those elements are here. The film suffers from trying to be too many things at once, as well as being WAY overly bloated. A 2.5 hour action/comedy/western is a tough sell, and the middle drags down quite a bit. The only real saving grace of the entire film was William Fichtner. He just ate up the scenery as the repulsive Butch Cavendish. I love most of his characters and he played Butch as the slimiest, most sinister piece of evil out there, making him truly terrifying and believable as one of the two villains. I was hoping for something better when I went into the theater, and hoped that a second viewing at home would alter my perception, but this is truly something that deserves someone in Disney to get fired over. 



*Rating:* 

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, and some suggestive material


*Video* :5stars:
[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13997[/img]Now, while I wasn’t pleased with the movie itself, I can certainly find no problems with the video encode. Presented in 2.40:1 AVC the transfer is about as pristine as you can expect coming from a digital negative. Disney sometimes has issues with their restorations of catalog titles, but their day and date releases are something to truly marvel over. The detail throughout the film is simply incredible, from the cracking paint on Tonto’s face to the individual textures and hairs on Silver’s, all is replicated a perfect as can be. Long shots look just as good as the close up, with copious shots of the western desert to please the viewers. Black levels are inky and deep without any black crush or faded blacks. The film was graded with a bit of a slate blue tone to it so the colors don’t seem to be as bright as one would expect, but it fits the tone of the movie quite well and gives a sort of bleak shading to the film.









*Audio* :5stars:
[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13998[/img]Just as perfect as the video is the 7.1 DTS-HD MA track. Thankfully with a DTS-HD MA track there is no audio dropouts that have occurred with some of Disney’s Dolby TrueHD 7.1 tracks, so no fears there. The dialogue is crisp and clear as one can expect and the front soundstage is literally teaming with activity. Now I may gush about surround usage in certain films, but this one takes the cake. I was literally sitting in awe of the sheer amount of surround activity that was active throughout the track. I swear there was never a scene where the surrounds weren’t pushing out as much sound as the mains and center were. Truly incredible detail with the sounds of hooves upon the sands or a bullet whistling by your ear from front to back. LFE is tight and CLEAN, no boominesss or sloppy bass here. Explosions carry a wallup but still stay detailed and restrained, giving a much more realistic weight to the movie (even though I do love some overcooked bass tracks as well, it’s always exciting to hear once that’s balanced well). Overall Disney did a fantastic job with this track and deserver all the praise they can get for it. 





[img]http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=13999[/img]*Extras:* :2stars:

• Armie's Western Roadtrip
• Riding the Rails of "The Lone Ranger"
• Becoming a Cowboy
• Deleted Scene
• Bloopers






*Overall:* :4stars:


Overly bloated and stumbling around in the dark, it falls flat on its face as a film and feels like Gore and Jerry went overboard throwing everything at the wall and hoping that something stuck. Being that it was setup to be the first part of a trilogy of films (seems to be all the craze nowadays) it sets itself up for failure by leaving too much open and not cementing itself with good writing and instead relies on the Michael Bay system (aka lots of pretty lights and wise acre comments) to get it through. However, the fantastic audio and visuals certainly are enticing enough to give it a rental if you can, or if you’re a fan then it kind of makes it a must buy. However as a blind buy I would have to HIGHLY recommend not purchasing until you’ve done at LEAST a $1.50 Redbox rental. 


*Additional Information:*

Starring: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: John Haythe, Ted Elliot
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 7.1, English, French, Spanish DD 5.1
Studio: Disney/Buena Vista
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 149 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: Dec 17th, 2013


*Buy The Lone Ranger Blu-ray on Amazon*



*Recommendation: Skip It!​*







More about Mike


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## tripplej (Oct 23, 2011)

Thanks for the review. Glad to hear this movie is not worth buying.. 

It did look impressive from the trailers but I also heard via word of mouth that this movie was not good.


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## Dougme57 (Sep 4, 2013)

I was not going to watch this until I read your review. I have been a Fitchner fan since Prison Break and will now watch just to see him!


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## Todd Anderson (Jul 24, 2009)

Torn. I have very little patience for sloppy movies... but I crave that stunning audio/video mix. Perhaps some day I'll have a little bit of extra time to waste...:innocent: doubtful... but maybe!


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## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

Dougme57 said:


> I was not going to watch this until I read your review. I have been a Fitchner fan since Prison Break and will now watch just to see him!


Fichtner steals the show easily. he's just so great at chewing up the scenery in great big mouthfulls (kinda like how Peter Stormaire can do)


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## Greenster (Mar 2, 2013)

I have yet to see this movie. I wanted to see it when it first came out but after a few of my friends reviews I X'ed it off of my list. Your review makes me want to see and rate it for myself. Maybe Ill give it a go.


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## B- one (Jan 13, 2013)

I think I will gladly pass on this one as well. Thanks for the great review I like W. F. As an actor as well but I'm not going to suffer through this one.


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## ALMFamily (Oct 19, 2011)

Thanks for the review Mike!

As with everyone else, the people I know that went to see this did not care for it either. That said, I am sure I will see it for myself to see the audio/visual goodies!


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## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

it definitely looks and sounds amazing Alm


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## bkeeler10 (Mar 26, 2008)

Todd Anderson said:


> Torn. I have very little patience for sloppy movies... but I crave that stunning audio/video mix. Perhaps some day I'll have a little bit of extra time to waste...:innocent: doubtful... but maybe!





ALMFamily said:


> Thanks for the review Mike!
> 
> As with everyone else, the people I know that went to see this did not care for it either. That said, I am sure I will see it for myself to see the audio/visual goodies!


Yes, I will admit that I will watch this just to revel in the audio/video. I'm a total geek that way -- I guess Joe is too and Todd maybe a little less so. Who cares about the content if it sounds so amazing! 

I did hear the movie was not so great, but then just yesterday I read a review over at High Def Digest and their reviewer gave it 4 stars (out of 5). So maybe it will be a pleasant surprise for a few of us.


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## Mike Edwards (Mar 10, 2011)

Yeah. Its one of those "love it or hate it" scenarios. Seems there's no middle ground from the forums


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## Jon Robbins (May 15, 2012)

I had low expectations going in from word of mouth and reviews while it was in theaters, so on that note i actually enjoyed it. It took the pressure off so I could just sit back and enjoy Micheal Bay-esk explosions and action. It helped that visually it looks great on Blu-ray.


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## ElTwo (May 2, 2009)

I did see it and enjoyed it for the mindless silly escapism I sometimes desire.
The movie may have been overly ambitious, and who knows how much remained on the cutting room floor (is there a 5 hour director's cut in the offing), but Mike hit the nail on the head; editing out about 20 minutes could really have brought this movie up a notch.

I kind of liked the story telling mechanism homage to "Little Big Man," and the sound and chase scenes were stunning. As for the story itself, I thought making John Reid an idiot attorney took away any nobility the character had in the past.

As for Armie Hammer; you don't really have to act if you're the great-grandson of Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum, but, then again, the part was written for him to look like an idiot (and not an endearing one).

All in all this is a "you should see it and decide for yourself" type of movie; I could give it a thumbs sideways, I would.:scratch:onder:

Great job on the review, Mike.


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

I'll take a pass on this one


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