RANGO : archive from 20th March 2011.

With my young lad I saw 'RANGO' this afternoon as Directed and Produced by Gore Verbinski at a cost of US$135M. This animated action comedy Western feature went on to gross worldwide US$246M and along the way picked up the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Animated Feature Film together with another 44 award wins and 22 nominations.






With an all star line up lending their considerable voice talents there is lots to like about this film. Johnny Depp is Rango, a pet chameleon who lives a life of action and adventure, in his own mind, but when confronted with real life action & adventure when his owner loses him in the Mojave Desert and he winds up in the isolated town of Dirt, he must learn quickly to stand out from the crowd rather than blend in as a chameleon does. He meets up with armadillo Roadkill (Alfred Molina)  - who is searching for the mythical 'Spirit of the West', and iguana Beans (Isla Fisher) who join Rango en route to Dirt.

When he arrives at Dirt, Rango presents himself as a tough drifter and promptly has a run in with a Gila monster Bad Bill (Ray Winstone) but avoids a shoot out confrontation when Bad Bill is scared off by a sweeping vicious red tailed hawk. The resulting fracas sees the hawk dispensed with, which in turn leads to the town Mayor - a desert tortoise named Tortoise John (Ned Beatty) - electing Rango as the new Sheriff. There is however, anxiety amongst the townsfolk now that the red tailed hawk has been thwarted, believing that local gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) will return to do no good!

Dirt it is believed is a dusty dry desert dirt bowl of a town low on water reserves that one night gets robbed, to which Rango is an unwitting accomplice at the hands of a mole named Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton). The next day with their precious little water supply gone Rango mounts a posse to go in search of the robbers and reclaim their water. After a chase through a canyon the robbers are caught but the water is gone!

Returning to Dirt the robbers are set to stand trial, but Rango has discovered that the Mayor has been buying up large tracts of land nearby, but the Mayor denies any wrong doing, instead claiming his intentions to build a new city to give them all hope, and a future. The Mayor though has a hidden agenda and so enlists Rattlesnake Jake to run Rango out of town. In the process Rango is humiliated and must confess that his high plains drifter image was a front to win favour. Turning his back on Dirt and its townsfolk he meets up with the mythical Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant) whom Rango pegs as The Man with No Name. The Spirit inspires Rango to return and finish what he started.

Teaming up with Roadkill again, Rango heads back into town but learns along the way that the towns water supply is being controlled by the Mayor by way of an emergency shut-off valve in the pipeline between Dirt and Las Vegas. Rango calls to Rattlesnake Jake for a shootout creating a diversion so that his assembled buddies can turn on the water supply, flood the town and free the wrongly accused robbers yet to stand trial.

Things though don't go quite according to plan and Rango and Beans are captured and thrown in the banks vault which when flooded will result in their demise. The Mayor turns on Rattlesnake Jake because he represents the Old West and he has plans for a New West that doesn't involve the low down snake. Luckily though the gun that the Mayor took from Rango is empty - the only bullet taken by Rango as a means of escape from the bank vault. As the flood comes so the Mayor and his men are washed away, Rattlesnake Jake is saved, Rango and Beans escape, Dirt is saved and refreshed with a new water supply, and Rango is hailed a hero.

This is a very entertaining and engaging film that features top notch animation that just gets better with every such creature feature. Watch out for the nods to others classics - 'A Fistful of Dollars', 'Mad Max', 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' etc . . . see how many you can spot! Catch it now on DVD, Bluray or download - you won't be disappointed, and, it's a film for kids of all ages - young & old!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-