Despite all the dry dirt and coarse landscapes, westerns have always been fertile ground for visual storytelling. Gore Verbinski, if nothing else, has shown in every one of his films an admirable devotion to whatever aesthetic he chooses. This film emerged with one of the most bafflingly misguided attempts at capturing nostalgia for an era long gone by, and landed flat in nearly every department, except one. It seems that in preparation to make this bloated and overdone mess, Gore Verbinski spent a month re-watching John Ford movies, and I mean that in the best way possible. The visuals of this film are extremely reminiscent of some of the classics of the genre - particular homage being paid to Ford's own The Searchers. And in the movie's final act (the best part of the whole movie), the chase sequence involving two locomotives is cleverly shot and visualized with genuine thrills - if it weren't for the movie that preceded it, it might've been one of the best action scenes of the year. Best Shot: It's a very simple one, but I have to admire Bojan Bazelli's ambition in trying to create a new "iconic" shot for the Lone Ranger - the title character atop his rearing steed. You know the one I'm talking about.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
