The Lone Ranger

Directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio. Starring Johnny Depp (Tonto), Armie Hammer (John Reid, Lone Ranger), William Fichtner (Cavendish), Tom Wilkinson (Cole).

Bottom line: The Lone Ranger is fine as long as you don't expect anything more than a Western on par with Pirates of the Caribbean.

2/4

It is interesting to read a review or listen to someone explain why he or she hates or loves something. Hatred often leads to the less than productive practice of nit picking. I’m guilty of it too, mind you. If I see a movie I loathe I might say something like, “Even the delivery of that line was lame.” Sure, I might mean that everything in the movie down to that specific line was bad but it comes down to little more than superficial criticism. Seeing examples of nit picking is helpful in reminding me that I shouldn’t partake. Why am I talking about this? After looking over some reviews of The Lone Ranger, I read a good bit of nitpicking.

Metacritic.com is a website that amalgamates reviews from users and professional critics to give a weighted average review to a movie, video game or TV show. The Lone Ranger currently has a 36% that tells you that the critics are panning it. Even after reading a number of reviews, I don’t understand why. The director, writers and producers were also responsible for Pirates of the Caribbean (also starring Johnny Depp). What are these people expecting?

A couple reviews complained that this interpretation of The Lone Ranger departed for the childhood memory too drastically. One critic noted that it was too violent for children. Quite right and that’s why it was rated PG-13. That is, children shouldn’t be going to see this and irresponsible parents are not grounds to criticize a movie. Others took offense that John Reid (Hammer), the Harvard educated district attorney who becomes the Lone Ranger, is little more than a bumbling fool compared to the clever, wily Captain Jack Sparrow Tonto (Depp). Some criticized the movie for juxtaposing the tomfoolery of Reid and Tonto with the images of US Cavalry Gatling gun mowing down a force of charging Comanche warriors. That it was inappropriate to mix the violence with the comedy. Think about what is going on here.

Historically speaking, the US cavalry massacring Native Americans did in fact happen. Instead of addressing history, we, as a society, have created the fantasy that is the Lone Ranger; he is a white male figure that stands for truth and justice in the Wild West. That is what we associate with the Wild West. The same relationship is present in this movie but condensed into parallel scenes. While the gruesome history plays out, a cartoon unfolds. We have the profiteering murderer building his self-serving transcontinental railway on the bodies of Comanche and Chinese immigrants. The movie doesn’t address the history or attempt to rationalize it. The villain receives his comeuppance but we still utilize the railroad. Since it’s already there we can use it, right?

I don’t particularly want to get into much of a race debate, because it is such a can of worms, but I have to at least address it. In the early days of cinema, white actors played black characters by wearing black face. It was a way to prevent minorities from getting into the film industry. This is a different day and age so we don’t have to worry about that type of active racism (at least to that extent) but, at the same time, is it a step in the wrong direction to cast Depp as such a major Native American figure? One might cite Depp when he said, “I guess I have some Native American somewhere down the line. My great grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian. Makes sense in terms of coming from Kentucky, which is rife with Cherokee and Creek.” Depp is white. A single-digit-percentage is not enough to say you are of a particular group. At the same time, it might even be a little racist to oppose Depp playing Tonto. Jay Silverheels was the original Tonto. Tonto, if you recall, is Comanche. Can we then say that, because Silverheels was a Mohawk, he was miscast? On one hand, it sounds racist to say, “He wasn’t miscast because at least he was Native American,” but on the other hand, it sounds equally racist to say, “He was miscast because he isn’t the ‘correct’ type of Native American.” How Native American must one be to be correct or authentic? Is it even possible or right to claim there is something as “authentic”? I wouldn’t be able to partake sufficiently in this discussion in this blog post so let me say this: I don’t think The Lone Ranger is racist for casting Johnny Depp. The woman ahead of me in the ticket line put it perfectly when she said, “Two for the Johnny Depp movie.” In much the same way that the movie redefines John Reid to be a bumbling goof, it redefines Tonto to be Johnny Depp. When the Comanche chief gives us the obligatory back-story segment on Tonto, he says, “He was once Comanche…but now he is something else.” That something else is a silly cartoon character.

This is a long movie so it has some lull points. If I had a nickel for every movie backstory chapter in recent years, I would be rich. Can’t we just have a character, like Tonto, exist? The villain of the movie actually had an important role in Tonto’s early life? Big deal. The movie didn’t belabor Cavendish’s past (or, if they did it wasn’t memorable) and I still understood his character. He is a cruel outlaw and, to show it, he cuts out and eats a man’s heart. What more must be said to characterize him as a villain?

I liked the Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack and I am not usually one to notice a movie’s soundtrack. This tells me either the movie was boring enough for my mind to wander or that it stuck out to me on its own. After listening to some of it on Youtube, I will confirm the latter but maybe because, like the rest of the movie, it has a Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-of-the-Wild-West vibe.

The acting, overall, was fine. Johnny Depp succeeds as a modern day Charlie Chaplin but, in that, he is a little silly for my tastes. Hammer’s performance as Reid is reasonable too. It wasn’t anything life changing but it wasn’t bad. Overall, “fine” is how I’ve come to describe The Lone Ranger. It is too silly for me to enjoy but it isn’t bad, at least, as long as your expectations are low…really low…none-existent-low. While I don’t think this movie deserves the hatred it seems to be receiving, you won’t be missing out if you pass on The Lone Ranger. If you do see it, it can be a good starting point for a discussion about race or America’s western expansion with respect to film.

Fast and Furious 6

Directed by Justin Lin. Written by Chris Morgan, Gary Scott Thompson (characters) Starring Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Paul Walker (Brian O'Conner), Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs).

Bottom line: Fast and Furious 6 is ridiculous but not really in a good way. I would pass on this unless you are a solid fan of the franchise.
1/4

By this point in the franchise, Fast and Furious has enough momentum that it can cruise with relatively little variation. Take the intro credits for this, the latest addition, Furious 6. It is a montage of major scenes of the previous movies. Should I then adjust my reviewing point of reference from a generic action movie to that of other Fast and Furious movies? That is, instead of asking, ‘is Furious 6 a good movie,’ I might ask, ‘is Furious 6 a good Fast and Furious movie.’

I’m joking…kind of. I am joking in the sense that if you are a fan of the franchise, you are probably going to go see this and, by this point, these movies have been coming out for a decade. After all, you have probably already determined whether or not you are a fan. At the same time, maybe you have just been absent. I, for example, have only recently discovered that I am a fan of the Star Trek franchise, which has been around since 1966. With this in mind, the question then becomes, ‘is Furious 6 the movie that gets you hooked on the franchise’. In a word: doubtful. Maybe, before I go any further, I should describe my relationship with Fast and Furious. I haven’t seen all of them but I have seen enough of them to understand the plot so while I can watch this one, I am not emotionally invested from the onset.

Furious 6 follows Agent Hobbs (Johnson) as he tracks down a formidable international criminal name Shaw (Evans). Hobbs needs a team to lead to an arrest so he turns to Dom Toretto (Deisel) and friends to help. They were the best hijackers in the world and will be able to provide professional insight. Their payment for assistance is an official pardon. Since the last movie, if I recall correctly, they have been living in Costa Rica or the Bahamas to avoid arrest at the hands of the US Authorities. Initially, Dom is hesitates. What changes his mind is a recently taken picture of his ex-girlfriend, Letty (Rodriguez). She supposedly died in a previous movie. You might think this is kinda romantic; a man risking his life with the slightest hope that his girlfriend is still alive. Well, then we would have to forget the fact that Dom enters this movie in bed with another woman who was Hobb’s former partner. This is starting to sound like a soap opera. Anyway, Dom calls his friends back together and they start tracking down the villain.

Even though I wasn’t expecting anything from Furious 6, I was still disappointed. I think it was more annoyance than disappointment, actually. It irritates me that this Furious 6 readies itself for a seventh movie despite the fact that it fails to contribute anything. Now that I think about it, you can just watch the first 10 seconds of the trailer and you know what to expect from the movie. Let me list the shots. Long shot of a car, medium shot of a woman (in a pink school girl outfit dancing), long shot of a group of women dancing on a stage, long shot of a car (with a couple, out of focus, bikini clad legs passing through the frame), women in a swim suit exiting a car, close up women dancing in hot pants (from the waist to the knees), long shot of car, close up of car, Vin Diesel. I don’t know what I was expecting… Note that we gaze at cars almost as much as we do at women. I’m not going to really touch dialogue because there wasn’t any of substance.

As I watched Fast and Furious 6 (aka Furious 6), I asked myself a question which makes writing this review somewhat difficult; at what point does a movie become a cartoon? Just from one of the initial chase scenes, we have this super-criminal driving an overcharged go-kart through city streets. Hobbs, in his appropriately sized hummer, is able to make chase until he jumps onto the villain’s vehicle. The go-kart drives into a wooden barrier to knock Hobbs to the ground. Don’t worry about the fact that he fell nearly a story onto the car only to be thrown to the concrete going 50mph. He’s The Rock. He is fine. This isn’t the exemplary scene that occurs during another one of the several chase scenes.

Letty is riding on a tank driving at high speed down a freeway bridge hundreds of feet above the rocky coast. Dom, driving a Hot Wheels car in the other lane, sees that the tank is going to flip over launching Letty to her death. He opens his car door, hangs onto the side of the car and drives it into the median. He ejects from the car just as Letty catapults from the tank. They collide and land, unharmed, on the hood of a parked car. Now, I am a fan of suspension of disbelief but this is getting a little out of hand. How can a movie be suspenseful with these types of shenanigans going down?

Even the driving premise of the movie is silly. Letty wasn’t actually killed in the earlier movie. She was in a coma for a couple days and now suffers from amnesia. Shaw picks her up from the hospital and the two have been committing vehicular-based crime since. Did I mention that this sounds like a soap opera? By the end of the movie, physical dangers or character “deaths” mean nothing to me.

Now, Fast and Furious consistently deals with the idea of family and loyalty. In Furious 6, the conflict is between family and efficiency. Shaw is of the mindset that a team is an accumulation of parts. When one doesn’t work, switch it out for another and repeat this process until you meet with success. Dom, on the other hand, sees his team as his family; he takes their strengths with their weaknesses. One scene, which helps distinguish Letty from her new, villainous crew is when she informs Shaw of a teammate’s death. Shaw simply says, “If he died it is because he made a mistake.” “Is that what you want us to say if that would happen to you,” she bitterly replies. Quite honestly, I don’t blame him. If I was in charge of a team in the high risk and dangerous world of international crime, I would feel more comfortable with this sort of accountability. Besides, by the end of the movie, the family for which Dom and Letty stand ignores the death of a lesser member. I suppose “family” means immediate family.

I am not sure but I feel like I should be mildly offended with respect to race. We have one African American character say to another “You have any change [for a snack]?” “Seriously? You’re a millionare yet you still tryin’ to ask for money?” “That’s how you stay a millionaire.” As he puts the change into the snack machine, Hobbs shoots the machine and says, “It’s on the house.” The guy looks around, shrugs and starts going through the snacks. Now, this gets my racism sense tingling. Am I wrong? There are other questionable scenes but I don’t particularly want to delve into it.

The question is do I recommend Furious 6? Negative, Ghost Rider. Go see something else. Re-watch the first one if you like but don’t waste your time on this. The chase sequences aren’t enough to justify the ludicrous plot, lame dialogue, sexism and racism. It simply isn’t worth it.

Star Trek: Into the Darkness

Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof and Gene Roddenberry. Starring Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock) , Zoe Saldana (Uhura).

Bottom line: Star Trek Into the Darkness is able to retain the adventurous spirit of Star Trek while is a really good sci-fi movie in general and it is even better if you are a fan of Star Trek.

3.5/4

Henceforth, I will refer to Star Trek: Into the Darkness as simply Star Trek. After a few initial credits, we jump straight into an adventure on an exotic planet. The crew of the Enterprise is on an alien planet trying to prevent a civilization ending volcanic eruption. It is an exciting refresher of some key points about Star Trek and its characters. Spock is logical, Kirk is brazen and Star Fleet is an exploration-based organization. It is a clear indication about the quality of the proceeding movie. One shot in the prologue stuck out in my mind. It is a close up of some alien flora that opens in the sunlight. As it opens, the camera changes focus as Kirk and Bones run by. You get the feeling that a living planet exists beyond this chase scene. This attention to detail makes the movie engrossing.

On a similar note, I was, for the most part, a fan of the special effects. They are pretty and I really appreciated the place they had in the production. Science fiction films often run the risk of becoming eye-candy. Star Trek is not one of them. The effects rightly support instead of eclipse the story of the movie.

The plot begins as an unknown white British man approaches a couple whose daughter is dying from an unknown disease. This man can somehow do something modern (year 2241) medicine cannot. What is the price of the cure? The father performs a suicide bombing attack on a Star Fleet archive center. This unknown man has just single handedly declared war on Star Fleet. We soon learn that this man is Khan: a genetically engineered super-soldier cryogenically frozen in space for the past 300 years. He now awake and wants to destroy Star Fleet. Khan was a villain first introduced in a famous episode of the original series. He and his crew are remnants of Earth's age of genetic engineering. He and his crew are far faster, stronger, more intelligent than any human and they are ruthless tacticians. Their purpose is to purge the Earth and galaxy of weaker species. This episode was not the last appearance of Khan. In 1982, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan centers on the return of the adversary. Star Trek: Into the Darkness and this current franchise plays with the ideas of parallel universes so they have a lot more artistic freedom. In the case of Khan, the difference is race. In the original episode, Khan is Mongolian. In Star Trek II, he is Spanish. Here, as I mentioned before he is white and British. This shift screams academic paper topic.

Up until recently, I was never much of a Star Trek fan so when the 2009 Star Trek came out, I was not enthusiastic. I re-watched it, warmed up to it then watched the original star trek series. I will now say that I am something of a fan. As with the previous movie in this franchise, Star Trek: Into the Darkness is able to capture the spirit of Star Trek while retaining its individuality. I found some of the references unnecessary though it doesn't become a fan fest like Street Fighter. That is, not every reference is included simply for the sake of the reference. At one point, Spock contacts Leonard Nimoy (the original series' Spock) to ask if they encountered the villain and, if so, how did they defeat him. Spock's response is "at great cost." He is alluding to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which I hadn't seen at the time. At one point, Sulu says, “Ready the landing ship we captured in the Mudd incident last month.” This is a reference to a character in an episode of the original series. Later, we see a Tribble (the little balls of fur from the original series). Yes, I get it Star Trek, you are a parallel timeline in the Star Trek universe but I don’t find these spattering of references amusing.

One issue I had with this movie is the quick cutting of the camera in the action sequences. I understand that quick cutting during a surprise attack, for example, emphasizes the chaos of the situation but it is not as enjoyable when I cannot parse the images on the screen. Fortunately, this was only a problem in a few scenes. My last issue with Star Trek was that it was a little predictable. I didn’t really think it was suspenseful or surprising as a result. Again, this wasn’t a major issue but I did find it worth mentioning.

When discussing this movie in relation to other Star Trek programs, a friend of mine brought up an interesting point. He is not a fan of this franchise because, he claims, Abrams is turning it into something closer to Star Wars. One example is the phaser, Star Fleet’s first choice of defense: a handgun-like device that emits a force field or a laser that can stun or kill. This new franchise has turned the device into a laser gun with which characters can have gun battles. Traditionally, the phaser has emitted something closer to a field instead of a projectile. The tone of a standoff differs drastically between the two. One cannot simply dodge a field so the action slows down, becoming more of a mental game. The fact that a mere handheld device can easily disintegrate someone emphasizes the anti-militarization theme present throughout Stark Trek (this one included). A laser gun leaves the theme for the larger story to address while we enjoy the immediate gratification of a gun battle. This type of detail makes me enjoy the original series that much more. Does it hurt my enjoyment of this franchise? As the movie, largely, emphasizes the anti-militarization theme, I am ok letting this pass. To discuss this theme, let me lay out the scenario.

We have a fugitive, a man who declared a one-man war against Star Fleet, hiding in hostile territory. The admiral of Star Fleet orders Kirk to lead “a manhunt, plain and simple,” to kill the terrorist. As the Enterprise nears the target location, he leads a small team to capture the villain and bring him back to Star Fleet to face a fair trial because it is “immoral” and “against Star Fleet regulations to condemn a man to death without trial.” Osama bin Laden, anyone?

When the party (Kirk, Spock, Uhura and two guards) attempt to find Khan, they are detained by a Klingon scout party. Kirk says that they exit their vehicle with gun blazing. Uhura objects. She speaks Klingon and correctly points out that if they attack first, the Spartan-like Klingons would obliterate them. She approaches them in peace, emphasizing their reason for being on the Klingon planet. In this case, violence even on the grounds of a proactive defense would lead to destruction. It is a theme developed further with the general militarization of Star Fleet.

The movie is careful in pinning the reason of Star Fleet militarization on an individual in Star Fleet. Star Fleet still has to be a positive organization with a focus on peaceful exploration otherwise; the core values of Star Trek would crumble. At one point, Kirk asks Spock for a status update, “Our options are limited. We cannot fight and we cannot flee.” Kirk and we as an audience face an impasse. How can we defend ourselves from a direct threat (the enemy is a star ship built solely for combat, for example) without compromising our morals? In different ways, Kirk and Spock utilize the weaponry of their enemy. Spock, being a Vulcan, cannot tell a lie so even on a basic level of honesty, the protagonists are ideal. What Star Trek promotes is not the defensive type of armament but the complete dissolution of offensive capabilities.

Another point that I would like to discuss is the position of women in Star Trek. There is a resistance to the typical, subtly, voyeuristic male gaze in cinema. Let me discuss some examples. First, when Uhura exits the ship to approach the Klingons. We assume Kirk’s perspective in the spaceship. In another movie, we would have a zoomed in close-up shot of her walking away from us but, here, we have a super long shot. The focus is on the Klingons and not Uhura’s behind. In fact, the shot is such that we can only see her back from the waist up. Now, there is shot or two that is so over the top, they do not fall into the normal type of female-objectification. Kirk and the admiral’s daughter are in a landing craft and she tells him to turn around. She begins to change into a space suit. In another movie, we would most likely take Kirk’s perspective as he peaks back to see her changing unaware of his gaze. This would be bad. Here, he turns and looks at her. First, we look at Kirk over her out of focus shoulder. She looks up and the camera cuts to a high-angle shot showing her entire body dressed in her underwear. The shot is so plain it feels clinical. It is a blatant shot of her body that feels actively and purposefully forced. In this way, I wish that more movies were like Star Trek.

Overall, Star Trek: Into the Darkness is a solid addition to the franchise. By the end of the movie, I was thinking, “I’d like to watch the next episode after this.” I would definitely recommend this to anyone who even mildly enjoys Star Trek and to anyone who enjoys Science Fiction. It would be worth it to go see it in theaters too (just for the complete cinematic experience). I have actually seen this twice in theaters and would be more than happy to see it again.