But his guttural pidgin English, elaborate war paint and the ridiculous dead crow he wears as a headdress suggest that, for all his desire to give Tonto the dimension and dignity he was robbed of for decades, Depp owes his own dubious debt to the Noble Savage stereotype he claims to critique.

Depp plays Tonto as a sly, sarcastic spirit warrior, continually mugging and making with subtle put-downs of his earnest but dim crime-fighting partner. And it turns out that “The Lone Ranger” may best be understood and appreciated as one long, baggy homage to Depp, who addresses the myriad personae that have made him the world’s biggest movie star, especially the tattooed, bejeweled bohemian primitive that defines his off-screen look as well as the punched-up version when he plays Jack Sparrow.Īs Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s perennially stoic and monosyllabic sidekick, Depp both challenges and indulges in the caricatures that made Jay Silverheels’s TV character such a lightning rod for Native American outrage. Those last three, of course, starred Depp himself. “ The Lone Ranger,” starring Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp, presents audiences with a case not just of “both” but “all of the above.” A draggy reboot of the franchise Western that started as a radio series before it became a movie serial and a hit TV show, this mishmash of styles, genres and tonal shifts makes for a dizzying pastiche best described in terms of the many movies it references throughout its nearly 2 1 / 2-hour running time, from “ Little Big Man,” Buster Keaton’s “ The General” and the Monument Valley-set canon of John Ford to “ Dead Man,” “ Rango” and “ Pirates of the Caribbean.” “ Iron Man 3” isn’t just a special-effects spectacle it has to have a little romance.

“ Man of Steel” isn’t only a science-fiction comic book movie it’s a violence-heavy, special-effects spectacle. “ White House Down” can’t be just an action adventure it has to be a buddy comedy. It’s an article of faith in a movie industry obsessed with chasing multiple demographic groups that no summer blockbuster can be only one thing.

Where to watch the lone ranger