I actually enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy a great deal (not the fourth one, however), but I can understand when people refer to those adventures as “over the top” or “overproduced.”  I didn’t mind silly extravagances and wild characters there, but The Lone Ranger is a different story.  Director Gore Verbinski has moved on since the Pirates movies but he applies the same sledgehammer sensibility to the action sequences of The Lone Ranger, along with Johnny Depp’s patented quirkiness.

John Reid (a bland Armie Hammer) becomes the masked avenger the Lone Ranger when his brother is killed, teaming with stoic American Indian Tonto (Depp) to rout the greedy railroaders who are exploiting the West for their own coffers.  William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper and Helena Bonham Carter are supporting characters all trying to get as much as they can for themselves, so long as the iron horse continues to progress across the wilderness.  Only the Lone Ranger and Tonto stand between greed and justice; all the other Westerners seem too stupid to see what is happening, or are only too happy to go along with the greed.

Interrupting the narrative from time to time is a flash-forward to Tonto as an old, old Indian in a museum display, telling the story of the Lone Ranger to a little boy.  This structure is annoying, foolish and quite irritating; it doesn’t add anything to the story and in fact diminishes its effectiveness.  And the film is built around two separate train sequences, one at the beginning and one at the climax, accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s version of the extended Rossini’s William Tell Overture music that has been the Lone Ranger’s trademark since the 1950s television series.

“Over-” best describes this movie.  Overproduced.  Overembellished.  Overeager. Overabundance. Overbaked.  Overbusy (in the action sequences).  Overexpanded. Overindulgent.  Overplotted.  Overpublicized.  Overstimulated.  Overwrought. Overheated.  Over the top.  Overkill.  And, thank goodness that’s over.

Verbinski’s movie is fitfully entertaining, despite a vanilla central character and a second lead who always outshines his reluctant partner.  It puts transcontinental railroaders in a particularly poor light, when in fact the railroad (and the telegraph which accompanied it across the plains) were significant tools of progress.  The film’s quirkiness extends past Tonto to the Lone Ranger’s horse, William Fichtner’s teeth and other grotesqueries of the West; ultimately it’s like visiting a freak show instead of a movie.  The script is funky but Verbinski’s vision is something even more strange, and has resulted in one big mess of a movie.  ☆ 1/2.  29 July 2013.