Comedy master Johnny Depp goes native...

Despite the title, it’s Johnny Depp’s Tonto who sets the tone for this sprawling action comedy Western. Depp is at his quirkiest playing the hero’s kooky Comanche sidekick, and his double act with Armie Hammer’s upright lawman John Reid, aka the Lone Ranger, works well. Yes, the film is overlong, over indulgent and uneven, but it’s also full of deadpan humour, thrills and plenty of gunplay, too.

And when we hear the rousing strains of The William Tell

Overture – theme, of course, to the original Lone Ranger radio and TV series – spurring the heroes to another impossible feat of derring-do, it’s hard not to be swept away. Edited. Dir: Gore Verbinski 2013, 12, 140min