Rango [2011]

Director: Gore Verbinski

Johnny Depp Paramount Pictures


An unnamed pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) becomes stranded in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium falls from his owners' car by accident. He meets an armadillo named Roadkill (Alfred Molina), who is seeking the mystical Spirit of the West and directs the parched chameleon to find water at a town called Dirt. While wandering the desert, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a red-tailed hawk and has a surreal nightmare before meeting the desert iguana Beans (Isla Fisher), a rancher's daughter, who takes the chameleon to Dirt, an Old West town populated by desert animals.

Using bravado and improvisation to fit in, the chameleon presents himself to the townsfolk as a tough drifter named Rango. He quickly runs afoul of outlaw Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), but narrowly avoids a shootout when Bill is scared off by the hawk's return. Rango is chased by the hawk until he crushes the predator by accidentally knocking down an empty water tower. In response, the town mayor (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the new sheriff. Meanwhile, the townsfolk worry that with the hawk dead, the gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) will return to terrorize them.

After discovering Dirt's water reserves — stored in the town bank inside a water cooler bottle — to be near empty, a skeptical Beans demands Rango investigate. That night, however, Rango inadvertently gives a trio of mole and prairie dog robbers access to the bank, mistaking them for prospectors. The townsfolk find their water bottle stolen the next day, so Rango organizes a posse to find it. They discover bank manager Merrimack (Stephen Root) dead in the desert from drowning, and track the robbers to their mountain hideout. There they fight the robbers' clan of subterranean animals over the stolen water bottle in a chase through the mountains before discovering the bottle to be empty. Despite the robbers professing they belatedly had discovered it was empty, the posse brings them to town for trial.

Rango and Beans deduce that the mayor has been buying all the land around Dirt. Rango confronts the mayor, who denies any wrongdoing and shows Rango he is building a modern city with the purchased land. The mayor summons Rattlesnake Jake, who recognizes Rango as a fake and runs him out of town after humiliating him and making him admit that everything he told the town about himself is a lie. Ashamed and confused about his identity, Rango wanders the desert and, in a daze, meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant), a cowboy whom Rango identifies as the Man with No Name. The Spirit inspires Rango, telling him, "No man can walk out on his own story".

With the aid of Roadkill and mystical moving yuccas, Rango learns the mayor has shut off the water line leading to Dirt's source of water, Las Vegas. Recruiting the robbers' clan to aid him, Rango returns to Dirt to call out Jake for a duel with a single bullet, a diversion so the clan and yuccas can flood the town with water and free the falsely accused robbers. The mayor forces Rango to surrender by threatening Beans' life, trapping them inside the glass bank vault to drown. He then tries to shoot Jake with Rango's gun, only to discover it empty. Rango has the bullet, which he uses to crack the glass and shatter the vault, freeing himself and Beans. Jake acknowledges Rango as a worthy opponent and drags the mayor into the desert to take revenge for double-crossing him. The citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of the water and recognize Rango as their hero.

Thank you wikipedia.