Review: Hi, no, Silver! 'Lone Ranger' goofy, grim

Saying the new "Lone Ranger" has "tone issues" is just code for "I could have done without the bad guy tearing out somebody's heart and taking a bite out of it."

The folks who did the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies go overboard with the violence in what is essentially a playful spin on a myth - or a TV version of a legend.

The U.S. Cavalry carries out massacres, "progress" is an act of venal destruction and corruption and "stupid white man" is the inscrutably eccentric Tonto's favorite putdown.

No, this is not John Wayne's Old West.

It's all in service of a tall tale being told by an ancient Indian (Johnny Depp) who may or may not be Tonto, a sideshow attraction who spins this yarn to a little boy (Mason Cook) wearing a Lone Ranger get-up in a fair in 1930s San Francisco.

Gore Verbinski's film is an overlong array of noisy, digitally assisted chases, shootouts, crashes and explosions, with the occasional flash of homage to the "real" Lone Ranger that suggests a better movie than the jumbled compromise Verbinski delivered.

Armie Hammer is John Reid, the new Colby district attorney who witnesses the latest and last heroic act of his lawman brother (James Badge Dale), who has "saved the day, as usual."

Heroic moments scored to "The William Tell Overture" still have the power to thrill. Everyone in this setting is seriously sun-baked and weathered, a nice touch of authenticity. And many of the jokey predicaments pay off hilariously.

Then the villain does something bloody-minded and psychotic, or villain crosses a line no sane man would cross, or shows up with an idea for wiping out the Red Man.

And the cheerful cartoon this might have been goes all dark and dismal.