Hi -yo SIL-L-L–VER!! It’s the best blockbuster of the summer to date! THE LONE RANGER rides again in a funny, exhilarating, verbally and visually witty action adventure that dares to be beautiful! The movie tells how it all began: Who was that masked man? What’s with Tonto? And what does “Kemo Sabe” mean anyway? For those too young to remember, “The Lone Ranger”  was a 1950’s TV hero who wore a big white hat and a black mask. His trusty companion was a monosyllabic “Indian” named Tonto. In this big screen, politically correct, 21st century rendition, the story is told in flashback by a “noble savage” who comes to life in a carnival sideshow exhibit and tells the tale to an aspiring young cowboy dressed in Lone Ranger garb. No worries– the tone here is more antic than pedantic– I never stopped laughing; but there’s seriousness and complexity enough to allow these characters free rein in between fantastically inventive action sequences.

Johnny Depp plays the enigmatic warrior Tonto in white face with a big black crow (that may or may not have expired) on his head, and delivers deadpan one-liners. In one of his first scenes we encounter him as a prisoner shackled; when asked, “Crime?” Tonto replies, “Indian.” And we’re off –on yet another of Depp’s thoroughly odd but hauntingly authentic characters out of which he has carved an unusual career.  While it’s Depp as Tonto who launches the narrative, Armie Hammer blazes his own crazy trail in the title role.  His journey from lawman to outlaw is especially gratifying, since Hammer starts out as the straightest of arrows–grave and a little goofy– but ends up as a masked renegade on a gravity-defying white horse. Depp and Hammer conjure a kooky chemistry, their mutual lunacy and single-mindedness send them hurtling into one crazy scrape after another.

The inspired Gore Verbinski, who directed Depp in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, is deftly in control of multifarious moving parts in a tricky script– a love triangle, a blood-hungry villain (William Fichtner), a ruthless robber baron (Tom Wilkinson) driving runaway trains and the industrial revolution westward, along with the American Cavalry, a one-legged prostitute (Helena Bonham Carter looking frowsy yet again in another thankless role), while underneath it all is a tale of brothers, brotherhood, and the price paid by those who were here first– all of this in a sprawling two hours and 29 minutes.  There are countless funny exchanges, visual quips, set-ups that pay off instantly or an hour later, and the funniest use of a horse since Mr. Ed, all of it shot through with some of the most stunning western landscapes this side of John Ford. Not all of the jokes pay off, we didn’t need the framing tale, and the film goes a tad slack on its way to the final triumphant stunt-laden set piece aboard a pair of speeding trains, but you will get your money’s worth; buy the giant popcorn.