We Got Drenge to Review Johnny Depp's Summer Flopbuster 'The Lone Ranger'

Noisey Presents: Drenge live in East London, tonight. For more info and to get tickets: click here.

Surly Derbyshire duo Drenge are not just our favourite new guitar band and the biggest thing to happen to Westminster politics since John Prescott. They’re also budding film aficionados, who talk almost entirely in obscure arthouse references and named their band the Danish word for “boys” after watching too many Dogme 95 films. Older brother Eoin even did film studies at university (before dropping out to be in a band). So we took them to the cinema to review one of the most talked about films of the summer: The Lone Ranger.

Noisey: Hi

Eoin: Hi. What film are we going to?

The Lone Ranger.

Eoin: Oh. Do we have to?

It’s one of the worst grossing films of the summer.

Rory: Oh, now I’m looking forward to it.

Are you Johnny Depp fans?

Rory: Is he in it? Oh god..

Let’s go for a poster analysis.

Eoin: I did Film Studies and this was like a heavy part. Ok here we go:

Eoin: The first thing that strikes me is that they spelt Arnie wrong. The second thing is you think Johnny Depp’s the lone ranger not Arnie.

What do you think of the black and orange colour scheme?

Eoin: Yeah, it reminds me of Green and Black’s chocolate, orange and black. Helena Bonham Carter’s in it. Which is weird, she and Johnny must be sleeping together by now they've been in so many of the same films. Tim Burton just doesn’t care about what goes on behind closed doors. Gore Verbinski directed it. He did Rango.

Rory: Rango Unchained? There’s a massive plot point in the poster. It’s sartorial because he’s holding a massive sword. This guy has got a studied sheath. Are Bruckheimer and Verbinski trying to go against war guilt, so it’s not just about he Westerners coming in and destroying America. Maybe they’re trying to make up for their past mistakes?

By getting Johnny Depp to play an Indian?

Eoin: Oh yeah, it wouldn’t be a true American apologist film if they didn’t get a white American actor to play an ethnic minority.

Rory: Yeah, in the original they didn’t try to hide it but now they’ve just put a bit of soot on his face.

Let’s look at some other posters while we’re here. How about Planes.

Rory: OK you see the thing about planes is that it’s Stanley McQueen from Cars but now he’s a plane.

Eoin: Y’know what’s interesting about all this? That most of the audiences are cars not planes, that’s weird isn’t it? I suppose it’s a bit like seeing dogs race.

What about Planes big competitor, Turbo?

Rory: Yeah, it’s like Cars but with snails. There’s a real sort of human voyeurism going on. There’s a fat snail there as well, can they go any slower? He’s probably the unluckiest of all the snails.

Eoin: I bet I can match all of the actors to their snail. Paul Giamatti: he’s probably the one in glasses. Snoop Dogg he’ll be the purple snail.

What’s the best film you’ve seen this year?

Eoin: An Act Of Killing, I went to see it with my girlfriend. We came out afterwards and she was in shock and I didn’t really know what to do. We’d went for a nice romantic evening and the film totally destroyed it, so we just spent the rest of the evening talking about Indonesian riots and Amnesty International.

LOL. Right, enough dicking about. Go and watch it and we'll hear what you think.

[About three hours later]

So, how was it?

Rory: I feel like you chose that film for us knowing it was going to be bad and it was pretty bad. I hope you’re happy, we’ve just wasted two to three hours of sunshine. We even waited till the end of the credits to see if anything would happen and nothing happened.

Eoin: It was us and two other people that were alone in the cinema, one of them just sat in the corner going “huh huh huh”, not even at the funny bits, just when they’d be walking he’d be laughing. When someone got shot he’d just go “uhh”.

I see you've made a lot of notes.

Rory: Yeah, I think we should start with the trailers. When we walked in there was a trailer for Mortal Instruments, which looked like Buffy, a really bad episode but with a massive budget. Following that was a very interesting trailer for a film called Seventh Son, which everyone will be raving about in like a few months time because it looks just like Game of Thrones but with a bigger budget. Then the film started without the BBFC card.

Pretty sure that's not allowed.

Eoin: Well I’m not going to blame the cinema; their only crime was playing this film. It starts with the Golden Gate Bridge being constructed and then a little red balloon flies past perhaps a nod to Le Balloon Rouge, a 1956 winner at Cannes, about a small boy.

Rory: Funnily enough, a small boy then walks into shot with eyes suggesting that he’s taken about two grams of MD.

Eoin: Then he goes into a museum and starts looking around and it gets a bit Coen brothers with lots of shots of long pauses on people’s faces and things that aren’t moving. Johnny Depp turns up, but he’s like all ugly. At this point there's really vivid colourisation. Then Depp goes “now we’re gonna tell you a story” and the rest of the movie is like they've filmed it in the worst Instagram filter ever. All these weird browns, Johnny Depp looks like purple.

How does this film compare to other big blockbusters of the summer?

Eoin: Wolverine and other films like Mission Impossible that were trying to tap into the international market, but this is so American. Armie Hammer, he’s doing a debt to early cinema like The Great Train Robbery cause his acting’s really shit, he just doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s like all the sound has been put on afterwards and all his decisions take place outside of his head, so when he smiles it’s like someone’s going “smile, now!” and then his hearing takes the message and he puts a smile upon his face.

Rory: Basically, he’s got a debt to trees as that acting was plain wooden.

Eoin: The film is trying so hard to be epic. It's like when you’re with some mates and the one guy you don't really know keeps saying “EPIC!!” and you just end up wondering what that word means to that person.

Rory: Can we talk about the spirit horse?

Eoin: In a bit. Also you’ve got Jonny Depp Indianing it up and pretending to be an Indian that doesn’t speak great English. It’s all a bit cod racist. I just want to sit Jerry Bruckheimer down and get to remake his films a la The Act of Killing, then have him feel all the guilt for all the shit work.

It was one of the least successful films in terms of money spent versus money taken at the box office, would you say any part of it was worth the spend.

Eoin: There’s this kid and his dad is dead, he’s called Danny and he’s asking “is my daddy dead?” It was a weird tongue twister, that was kinda funny. I had a good time though. Can we do this weekly?

Yeah, Next time you can pick the film.

Rory: I don’t want that freedom. If you can get us premiere tickets to Seventh Sun we’ll review that, the Game of Thrones one.

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