![]() The bad guys here are not the Cavendish Gang, but an evil bunch called the Regulators, who are trying to force farmers off their lands to clear the way for the railroad. ![]() Luke is reunited with his Texas Ranger brother just long enough to ride off with his 12-man troop in pursuit of the bad guys. There’s a little bit of a payoff later, when the Ranger performs the same stunt, but it’s still plenty dumb. But because he’s totally inept at fighting, he must be rescued by Tonto, who (and here’s the dumbest part) enters the scene with a flying Kung Fu kick right out of Enter the Dragon. T’s hot sister is being harassed by a gang of snot-nosed ruffians, and our hero, newly arrived from the East, rushes to her defense. One of the dumbest parts comes at the beginning, on the first meeting of Tonto and the future Ranger. He appeared in Dances with Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans, in a couple of the mini-series spin-offs of Lonesome Dove, and starred as Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn in TV movies. The only other actor of note (perhaps the only real actor in the film) is Wes Studi, who has made a career of playing convincing Indians, partly because he’s a genuine Cherokee. ![]() But once you get past all this kowtowing to youth (abhorrent as it may be), parts of the film can be mildly entertaining. And there’s an eighties-rock soundtrack, totally inappropriate to the time or the setting. The cast includes a hot young blonde as the newspaper editor, a hot young brunette as Tonto’s sister, and a hot young in-between as the widow of the Ranger’s brother. As a result, both young Tonto and the young Ranger are sometimes-angst-ridden, sometimes-smart-alecky twenty-somethings with a lot of growing up to do. The folks at the WB tried to retool the Ranger story to appeal to their teen and twenty-something audience. Much of this movie’s inherent badness is due to the concept. Here it is: I now believe this film is not a bit worse than The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and might even be a hair less bad. But, having re-viewed both films recently, I must revise my opinion. Until recently, that was my feeling, too. Among Ranger aficiandos, this 2003 Made-for-WB movie is an even greater stench in the nostrils than the 1981 disaster starring Klinton Spilsbury. ![]()
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