There’s a point halfway through The Lone Ranger where Johnny Depp kicks a dead horse; that’s pretty much what I thought this film was going to be like. The trailers looked terrible and critics were lining up to savage it before it was even released. The truth is that this is actually this year’s John Carter, i.e.. a film that has been killed by word of mouth, bad reviews and bad marketing but is actually one of the most entertaining films of the year. It somehow manages to be a revisionist western, a Disney film that has the balls to remind you of the genocide of the native American Indian and a family film that unashamedly entertains. It tips its hat to every decent western you can think of without ever getting buried under the weight of knowing homage. It’s as playful as Sergio Leone and has two train sequences as inventive as Buster Keaton. It delivers the spectacular scenery of John Ford and is as attempts the same pathos as Dances with Wolves and Little Big Man. It plays with the notion of heroes and myth but still has you rooting for the good guys. The villain is believably psycho and you feel the impact of bullets as much as you would in Peckinpah or Walter Hill feature. It even references El Topo. Really, what more do you want? Cowboys vs Aliens, Maverick, The Wild Wild West? Get out of here. It’s not perfect by any means; it is blighted by the same things as most modern blockbusters - too long, dodgy politics, clunky framing narrative and Helena Bonham Carter but it delivers more thrills than any amount of big robots/zombies/superheroes hitting each other.
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