Awesome / The Lone Ranger (2013)

• The Final Battle has the classic Lone Ranger theme (aka "William Tell Overture") playing. Even not being a big fan of Lone Ranger, it's ridiculously awesome. One reviewer, who utterly savaged the rest of the film, said of the final sequence, "And suddenly, the classic music that has so long been associated with the Lone Ranger begins playing, and once again I was a boy, sitting in front of my grandfather's television, cheering on the thrilling heroics of the hero. This amazingly entertaining and thilling sequence was almost enough to change my mind about the rest of the movie. Almost."
  • Highlights include the slight Mickey Mousing with the gunfire, Silver and the Lone Ranger barely avoiding death when the train they are atop of goes through a tunnel, Tonto's trick with the ladder, and John riding Silver through the compartments while firing at the other train through the windows.
  • Danny's attempts to help Tonto using his slingshot.
  • Danny throws John the silver bullet and he proceeds to shoot the gun out of Cole's hand from an impossible distance. Rather than simply Hand-Waving it, the movie gives us a few wide shots of the valley and a quick focus on the bullet, boldly illustrating both the impossibility of the feat, the sheer magnitude of the sequence leading up to it, and the implausibility of that bullet being in the right place at the right time, pushing a tired cliché straight into Refuge in Audacity territory without making a joke of it. And all that to the climax of Hans Zimmer's rendition of the classic Lone Ranger theme.
    "I'm a spirit walker. I can't miss."
  • Butch getting pulverized by the train coach.
• Silver. Pick any part, the best example being Silver somehow managing to get on the top of the burning barn lowering a rope down to John and Tonto to help them escape, then jumping off said burning barn to the ground.
  Tonto: Something very wrong with that horse...
• "This is a damn bank robbery!"
• During the climax, John and Butch confront each other on the roof of the train. When both find their guns empty, Butch draws a knife while John rolls up his sleeves...
  Butch: (incredulously) Don't tell me. You boxed in law school.
  (Tonto comes by on a ladder. As Butch looks in utter disbelief, John cold-cocks him with a right cross)
  John: As a matter of fact, I did.
• Two words: Bad trade.
  • Two more: What bridge?
    • Before either of those four words, we have Tonto confront Cole and admit that demonizing the latter as a "wendigo" was just a coping mechanism for how he'd been tricked by an ordinary man. It's surprisingly mature of Tonto to come to terms with his demons. On the flip-side, he doesn't easily forgive Cole, given what he's capable of.
• John figuring out that Latham Cole is the true mastermind behind everything and was planning to kill him, simply from several clues dotting around the room they were both in and the undertones of Cole's speech. When Cole does try to shoot him, John proves more than ready and easily turns the tables on him. This scene marks just how far John has come.
• How perfectly the film captures John Reid's transition from milquetoast lawyer to badass superhero. He starts off as an idealistic city slicker lawyer, a guy who trained in boxing but hasn't been in a real fight, and who hasn't held a gun in years. He's a firm and optimistic believer in the rule of law. After being forced into an Action Survivor role, seeing how corrupt the enforcers of the law can be, and finding himself somehow doing things that fall strictly into Refuge in Audacity, he comes out of the film as an Action Hero firmly on the good end of To Be Lawful or Good, who just goes with how audacious and out there his actions can be. It works.