Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

     The latest cinematic resurrection of The Lone Ranger is bloated beyond any degree of tolerance, but does have something worthwhile to offer.  The climactic twenty minutes is an extended train chase that begins with an echo of a grandly old-fashioned kind of heroism: the villains are escaping, a cry for help goes up, things look desperate and he appears, on his rearing white horse, bursting into action.  As the William Tell Overture swells, the tongue-in-cheek tone and subversive treatment of a somewhat creaky legend is completely done away with and the masked man is given his due.
     In an era when cinematic superheroes become increasingly dark, it is a little bit awe-inspiring to be reminded just what heroes are for and that they can still come charging out of the past to save the day just in time.