‘Rango’ is a Perfect Movie and an Endearing Western

Gore Verbinski’s Rango is a hilarious, thoughtful, and visually beautiful narrative about a chameleon who becomes sheriff of a town aptly named ‘Dirt’ and still holds up as one of the best westerns of the last 20 years.

I think most of us missed the boat on Rango. I don’t mean that we didn’t enjoy it, clearly its 246 million dollar box office run along with scoring a 75 on metacritic as well as winning Best Animated Feature shows that clearly it was enjoyed when it released in March of 2011. What I mean to say, is that we passed up on a wonderfully weird western “shot” by Roger Deakins that takes a look at the tropes often found in the weeds of a classic western and reckons with them in a way unlike most other films in the genre.

There’s levels to what I adore about this movie, the first of which is it’s story. Rango is a tale of an originally nameless pet chameleon with a flare for the dramatic who winds up stranded in the desert and wanders his way into a small town where almost everyone lives in abject poverty and has developed a religion built around a waining water supply. After stumbling into a saloon in town, our hero takes on the moniker of Rango, and through a stroke of blind luck, Rango defeats the hawk that has stricken terror into the big bad of the film, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy). From there. Rango takes on a role as the town’s gunslinging sheriff, facing off against a horde of hillbilly moles, the most evil capitalist movie villain since Mr. Potter, and a rattlesnake with a gatling gun for a tail. The genre tropes and clichés are obvious, but where Rango succeeds is in its adoration for those clichés and cinema as a whole. The film begins with the main character performing his own one act play in his small cage, reckoning with identity, performance, and story telling. Over the next 20 minutes, there’s direct references or homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Blazing Saddles, The Big Lebowski, and Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. Whether it is directly spoofing the “Ride of the Valkyries” sequence in Apocalypse Now or the death star canyon run in Star Wars: A New Hope, the filmmakers show their cards, and do so in a way that is a reminder that movies rule.

The details that make up every frame of animated movies are what drive twitter accounts everywhere to speak on the “perfect frame” from their favorite animated movie, but a still doesn’t capture all of the care put into Rango. The character design of Rango is where the care put into the film shows through the most. In one instance, soon after Rango arrives in Dirt, we see him show off his own form of mimicry. Matching the strides of three townspeople, our chameleon shows his own form of camouflage, while also showing us three distinct characters that are nonessential, nameless, and without a line of dialogue, but are reminders that Dirt is a town that people have lived in for decades, some of them returning home from wars, others electing to stay in their town and till their land till they wind up dirt themselves. The details take the time to show what life is like for a rabbit with one ear who lives life as a small town doctor, or an owl who turns his head all the way around to avoid being punched in the face. In any animated movie about animals, there’s classic moments where we see the animals’ traits come forth, maybe a fox acting sly or a rabbit with a lot of siblings. I make specific mention to Zootopia, but I’m going on the record to say that Zootopia rules. In Rango however, you see these traits distorted a bit, and taking certain visual cues from an animals physiology and deciding “yeah, this Colorado River toad does look like he’d be mean if he could talk, so he’d make a great saloon owner.” They take it a step further by enlisting the 2011 version of an all-star animated movie cast. Whether it’s Ned Beatty as a disabled turtle who is the mayor of Dirt, Harry Dean Stanton playing a blind mole with innumerable mole and prairie dog children, Timothy Olyphant pointing out to all of us that he sounds like a younger Clint Eastwood, or Abigail Breslin voicing a precocious cactus mouse. These characters and their details are the perfect example of the time dedicated by John Logan (The Aviator, Hugo) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, A Cure for Wellness) in the script, Mark McCreery’s (Jurassic Park as a vfx hand) production design, and Industrial Light and Magic (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park) bringing these characters to life.

This wouldn’t be a review that I’ve published if I didn’t mention Roger Deakins at some point. My king lent his craft to a Gore Verbinski animated movie, and helped create one of the most visually stunning animated movies I have ever seen. Rango is such an interesting addition into Deakins’ collection of western stories, all of them coming in a four year span. No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford, and True Grit all showcase his genius ability to display sprawling vistas, confined spaces, shadows, and human emotion. In Rango, he gets to do just that, though he gets to be a bit unhinged with his camera movements, while getting to do some of his favorite things. Roger Deakins once said “I like character films. I like photographing a human face. I find that more interesting than anything else, and that's what I will continue to do.” and that is on full display in every moment in Rango. The entire film is focused on character, with the main point of the story being our protagonists self discovery, in which Deakins takes the time to linger on Rango’s face, both in moments of triumph and introspection.

It is within all of these things that you find a perfect film. One that is a love story to films and the people who make them. The best westerns are always about someone’s way of life changing, whether it be getting pulled back into an old way of life, growing old, finding ones true self, or the expansion of the west seeking to destroy that way of life. In Tombstone, Wyatt Earp wants to quiet down and make an honest wage when he is pulled back into being a law man. In Unforgiven, similarly, a retired gunslinger is brought back for one last job. True Grit spends a the passage of time and aging, which in and of itself is about a way of life changing. Rango is about a man discovering his name, and discovering who he truly is, as well as being about the fear of expansion and how it will destroy what so many people have come to know and love. I love this movie, watching it brings joy to my life, and I would encourage you to seek it out.