The Lone Ranger

Every so often, a movie comes along that’s so repellent, so ignorant, so baroque in its vileness, it saps your will to ever sit in a theater again. The Lone Ranger, which introduces the masked Western hero of yesteryear’s radio, TV and lunchboxes to the PlayStation generation, is such a production.

Gore Verbinski, who directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, tries here to repurpose that series’ self-aware sweep and cartoon logic, again relying on Johnny Depp. But the actor can’t do much with Tonto, a part that requires him to play holy-fool straight man to Armie Hammer’s dim, dull title character. (Hammer continues to look and sound like a sort of GMO Judge Reinhold, not a topline-ready star.) What’s left is 150 minutes of budget-busting CGI punishment, a migraine machine rather than a thrill ride. Flashbacks start within flashbacks, Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Wilkinson guiltily pick up paychecks, and a bad guy eats a human heart just to see if the ratings board is paying attention.