Gore Verbinski
The Lone Ranger

THE REVIEW

I won't spoil anything about the plot, it was released just two days ago.

Last night I went to the cinema a bit unmotivated. After War World Z and After Earth, I started to think that this summer wouldn't be memorable for cinema. Sure, you might say, you could also watch "This Is 40" or "Immaturi il viaggio 25" and you'd be really sure about it. The fact is that in the summer I allow myself more spectacle and, if you will, ignorance rather than philosophy and content. I save those for streaming. With this spirit, as we were saying, I entered the trusty Multiplex and got tickets for "The Lone Ranger", the 9:30 PM showing, the only one available. Medium Coke, I sit down, the commercials start (where have the good old strings of trailers gone??? only ads for the new Clio and local restaurants...) and it begins.

The story is told by one of the protagonists himself, the comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp) now decrepit and employed as an extra in a Wild West Show; no unbearable third-person narrations or voiceovers though, everything is straightforward and enjoyable, with few well-placed "returns to the present." Although set in the Wild West, I found the story anything but trivial, and it didn't even suffer from the western that preceded the film this year: "Django Unchained," which I admittedly really fell in love with. In my opinion, in fact, they managed to touch all the indispensable tropes of the genre (massacre of natives, unscrupulous rush to wealth, daredevil rangers, train heists, lots of train heists...) without ever falling into the predictable, but elaborating a truly remarkable psychology and individual story for each character. Great performances by Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp (at times a bit too zany, but let's remember it's still a Disney movie) while the space given to Bonham Carter is, compared to that on the poster, really limited.

In conclusion, it won't be "True Grit," it won't be "Once Upon a Time in America," but if at least on hot summer nights you prefer to hear (in the true sense of the word) a beautiful story rather than watching "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," then the film has just hit theaters, go watch it.