The Lone Ranger

1 ½ pipes out of 4

Drink up me harties yo ho! Oh wait, that’s a different movie right? At times it is incredibly hard to tell and the only distinguishing aspect is the setting in the dessert instead of the seven seas. Johnny Depp is at the forefront as Tonto, shoving the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) to a supporting character which gives the film a fresh take on the masked vigilante except that instead of a Tonto of old, we view a pirate in the middle of a dessert. Depp maneuvers around the film as an exiled Native American of a dying tribe bent on evoking justice on the two men who slaughtered his village. His only companions are a dead crow sitting on his head and a morally conflicted Lone Ranger seeking justice for his brother’s murderer. The moral conflict raging inside the Lone Ranger, on whether it is justice if he kills his brother’s killer or the government does would be fine and actually interesting had the film ended at the hour and a half point. The fact that the film continues for a whole other hour with the same scenarios arriving with the same results is ridiculous. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results and by this definition the lone ranger is a lunatic. The audience gets bored seeing the same thing happen over and over with no issues resolved and becomes so far gone that they can’t comeback far enough to care about the films climax. The saving grace of the film from being a complete and total failure is Johnny Depp’s uncanny ability to make the audience laugh even though we have seen the same character before. What was initially thought of as simply another white man trying to play Indian turns into a well done portrayal of Tonto by Depp. He is believable to the character and keeps the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood moving in the right direction as almost truthful.

White House Down

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Olympus Has Fallen, take 2. More takes generally create better results and that is definitely the case here for White House Down outperforming Olympus Has Fallen. Roland Emmerich takes the idea of having the White House hostilely taken over and makes it feasible. Unlike Olympus, who uses brute force to take the White House, Emmerich uses espionage and betrayal what takes down the defenses of our nation’s most defended building. From the trailer it appeared as though Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum would be cracking jokes at inappropriate times during a massive crisis but it turns out that the jokes made sense during the time and defused the tension building, allowing the audience to stay invested without tensing all the way through the film. This only works because the high tempo action and comedy are maintained all the way through the film with no lulls until the films crescendo. At first glance White House Down is just another over the top action comedy when in reality it pays homage to the classic films in the genre. Emmerich pays direct tribute to such film as The Rock and the lethal weapons series while containing almost every cliché possible from the brilliant hacker to the betrayed soldier. The cliché’s work well together but there are a few loose ends that where hastily tied up with no real thought keeping White House Down off the top shelf but it is pretty darn close.