#61 THE LONE RANGER

149 MINUTES. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE MINUTES! 8,940 SECONDS!

Directed by Gore Verbinski, starring: Johnny Depp, Arnie Hammer William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, Ruth Wilson, James Badge Dale, and Helena Bonham Carter.

You could travel to Cardiff in that time by train in the time it takes this train wreck of a movie to derail.

Some bad men want to start a war with the local native Americans and another man who's building a railway through Indian territory might be involved with it and a mysterious silver mine. Plus there's a cannibalistic psychopath riding around being chased by a mentally ill native American and an assistant DA trying to bring the baddies to justice under the rule of law while wearing a mask, riding a tricked out horse and being the butt of every single other person's joke.

This film uses a lot of trains to deliver its thrills and like all train journeys the first half hour is fun but the following 2 and a half hours are just a tedious chore, not unlike this film actually.

It starts with an impressive train sequence and crash, then repeats the trick with another epic train sequence at the midway point and then again at the end because you know the old maxim, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Trouble is by the third time, you just don't care and because most of the stunts and action by this point are CGI you just don't care.

The Lone Ranger isn't an out and out bad film or even a terrible film, sure it has awful moments, bad acting, awful special effects, stupid plot points or unnecessary 21st century revisions and it makes the Lone Ranger the butt of all jokes and a bungling idiot but it's main failing is that it's oh so very long,  oh so, jaw-achingly long. Interminably long, long to the point of painful. Long, long, long. Long and oh so very dull, desperately dull, and nothing that happens ever really lifts the dullness.

There's so much wrong with this film, I can't be arsed to list it all. But the truth is, that what's wrong isn't worth complaining about because it's the sheer boredom factor that will get you long before Johnny Depp's over acting, the horrible Lone Ranger (not Arnie Hammer, who's okay) the savage, jarring brutality, the 21st sensibilities, or the 101 other issues get you.

4/10