Disney's 'Lone Ranger' Loses Its Way in Bloated Western Adventure

Johnny Depp carries over his quirky Jack Sparrow routine as Tonto in The Lone Ranger.

Ever since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl made boatloads of booty back in 2003, Disney has desperately gone back to the drawing board attempt to duplicate its financial and critical success. 2010's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time failed to generate any sort of buzz as did last year's John Carter, but now with The Lone Ranger riding headfirst to the big screen, is there any reason to beat yet another dead horse?

Going through the motions to tell the origins of how and why district attorney John Reid (Armie Hammer) and Comanche outcast Tonto (Johnny Depp) crossed each other's paths shouldn't need to include a tonal seesaw shifting between silly lighthearted Jack Sparrow stunts one minute and the villains feasting on a victim's bleeding guts the next.

Eastwood Slows Down with Hoover Bio-Pic

Beneath those layers of makeup, Leonardo DiCaprio emerges as a seasoned J. Edgar Hoover.

Something as simple as a name can trigger certain keywords about a person. Pioneer. Powerful. Controversial. Those three words can describe a number of people, yet one man who innovated untouched crime scenes, fingerprint identification and wiretapping is a perfect fit to that mold. 

Director Clint Eastwood’s J.  Edgar follows the rise and fall of the career and highly debated personal life of J. Edgar Hoover, embodied by the phenomenal presence of Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is unquestionably the strongest asset of the production, maneuvering between Hoover in his heyday and in his twilight with his one of his most remarkable performances to date.