The Lone Ranger has a vengeance plot in mind, as does Tonto, and if Tonto’s is righteously motivated by genocide and theft, it’s also complicated by trauma, which in turn effects his isolation and multiply signifying madness, usually surfacing in his less than hilarious Jack Sparrowish tics and antics. They bicker and brawl, they reconcile and conspire.

And in that familiar context, their interactions are exceedingly uninspired. This teamwork business constitutes the bulk of what follows. The arrival of Butch’s men leads not only to his escape, but also to the inevitable switch, such that Tonto and John (whom Tonto immediately calls “kemosabe”) are chained together and so are forced right away to work as a team. The latter, as it happens, is going west as well, not in a nice suit, but in heavily caked and apparently irremovable face paint, fringe pants, and chains as well, these linking him to the other criminal on board, the scar-faced stone killer Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner). This chunk of background - which, by the way, can’t actually be known by Tonto, but does serve his mythologizing of the man about to become the Lone Ranger - leads slowly to the point, which the first encounter between John and Tonto. That is he’s headed to the still wildish town of Colby, Texas, this after years of fancifying education and the loss of his one true love, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson), to his dashing Texas-ranger brother (James Badge Dale). Dressed in a fancy suit and nodding politely to the nice Christian ladies singing hymns, square-jawed John is headed home. As you anticipate, it’s a story of origins and endings, fictions and vague truths, beginning more or less in 1896, when a district attorney named John (Armie Hammer) is riding a train west. It’s 1933, the kid’s wandered into the exhibit on his own, and he’s not a little surprised that the fellow labeled “The noble savage in his native habitat” is talking to him, and has, in fact, just called him “kemosabe”.īeing a Lone Ranger fan - identified by his mask and cowboy hat - the boy gets the reference, and so, after a bit more back-and-forthing, settles in to listen to a very long story as told by Tonto (Johnny Depp). “I think you made a mistake, mister.” A little boy (Mason Cook) gazes up at an ancient Comanche Indian through the glass of a Wild West exhibit. “It is strange that you do not remember any of your poetry, William Blake.”

Tonto man on moon song