Rango

If you're looking to warm up just a little more before spring returns, take a gander at Rango.  It will have you as parched as the characters who reside in the western town this film takes place in.

When I saw this in 2011 I had really no expectations as I hadn't read up on it.  I assumed it was a run of the mill celebrity-laden animated feature (which it is to some extent) out to grab another family-audience buck.

Johnny Depp plays the title character, a chameleon. Actually the character is unnamed but takes on the pseudonym Rango. He is a city slicker lizard who lives in a beachy terrarium and questioning his existence as his human family crossing the desert.  When due to accidental circumstance he is stranded in the desert, his existential search leads him to the town of Dirt, where the old timey western denizens are parched and the most valuable commodity is water.

Rango finds himself out of place but ready to realize a bigger persona than he has had up til then.  He helps the townfolk defeat the baddie whom as we expect has been hoarding water from them.

The bones of the story are quite conventional: a (literal) little guy tells tall tales about himself, pretending to be something grander than he is. The town believes in him and believes he is their salvation. When they need him most he is exposed for a sham. But, he finds redemption and becomes the savior he didn't think he or they thought he could be. A typical western plot.

What sets this above other animated movies:

All the Pretty Horses

Despite a pretty good cast and crew, All the Pretty Horses is kind of derivative. Matt Damon stars as a rancher's hand leaving to strike out on his own around the 1950s. Directed by Billy Bob Thornton from a book by Cormac McCarthy.

Damon plays John Cole, a ranch hand who leaves his home in Texas with his friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas). The death of Cole's father means his estranged mother has taken control of the ranch, leaving Cole pretty penniless. From Texas they head for Mexico to find work, and on the way they meet young runaway Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black) whose braggadocio leads them to believe his horse is stolen. They want nothing of him and leave him behind, but he comes along anyway, and his horse is lost in a storm. Blevins sees the horse in a Mexican town and aims to steal it back, splitting up the group, and this begins some serious trouble for all the guys.

Cole and Rawlins do find some work on the ranch of a rich Mexican (Ruben Blades), with Cole catching the eye of his lovely daughter Alejandra (Penelope Cruz). Although Cole impresses the father, her aunt frowns on their relationship, doing what she can to warn him off as well as trying to reason with him to leave Alejandra's reputation unsoiled, especially by a manual laborer such as himself. The two guys get arrested later as accomplices to murder and horse thieving with Blevins. Cole does his utmost to defend himself as well as the others, while trying to stay alive in the seedy and bleak prison setting.

Red Hill

Sometimes I like a good action movie that is not too taxing, yet still highbrow enough to satisfy my artistic sensibilities.  This modern Australian western/police suspense story, although it has many old fashioned western movie aesthetics,  has some gripping action and a couple of sympathetic characters who are opposite sides of the same coin. 

Young cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) has been voluntarily transferred to a countryside town, with his heavily pregnant wife. The reason at first is not explained why he elected to move to a smaller municipality. On his first day at work, there is an accident at a prison some miles away, and a murderer escapes, Eddie (Tom E. Lewis), an aborigine who was put away by Red Hill's sheriff Bill (Steve Bisley). We see the police department is pretty much an old boys network and Bill makes it clear to Shane that he is not very welcome. Bill's close-minded attitude also means he aims to lock down Red Hill and kill Eddie on sight if he comes, implying he is in the right to use such force because Eddie wants revenge for putting him away. Unfortunately for them, Eddie is a superior native tracker and bests the posse again and again, except for Shane, who for some reason he lets go at a critical moment when he sees they share something in common. During a long day and night as they first hunt Eddie, then become the hunted, Shane discovers some secrets of the town and has to decide who's side he is on.