lasttimeisaw Marrying a cutting-edge Sci-Fi concept with the horse opera, best-selling author Michael Crichton's directorial debut feature WESTWORLD is a hybrid high on ideas but woefully inadequate in its modality. In the then-near future (1983 to be specific), those who can afford $1,000 per day, per capita are privileged to stay in the Delos amusement park, which is divided into three distinctively manufactured worlds: Medievalworld, Romanworld and Westworld, peopled with human-likes androids to pander to their clientele's indulgence of every immoral and illegal whim without any consequences, that is a provocative premise to plumb how low humanity can descend to when one's action is no longer curtained by legality, but in Crichton's book, that would be too depressing, so instead, he opts for another direction, what about an inexplicable malfunction (like an endemic virus) befalls on those lifeless robots and turns them to hunt down humans? Admittedly, there is a modicum of prescience concerning our eternal dread of A.I. technology in the design, but little food for thought is left in the final product. Our proxy in this immersive adventure is the Chicagoan lawyer Peter Martin (a mustachioed Benjamin slumming it half-heartedly), a newcomer to the park accompanied by his friend John Blane (a smirky Brolin in a horrid-looking hairdo), who has patronized the place before and they choose to stay in Westworld, where those classic tropes like gunfights, bar brawl, jail break and brothel-dossing are churned out in a slapdash tepidity (one wonders how come they make absolutely no bones about sleeping with a programmed machine, however their verisimilitude of human can fool our eyes, there is something biologically repugnant here has been crassly glossed over), although the pair do cleave to the "make love not war" watchword when a trigger-happy robbery is alternatively proffered. The thrill and spill escalates when insidiously and no less mysteriously, the android revolt takes shape in all three worlds, but in the main it centers on the Gunslinger (Brynner), who is programmed to provoke quick-draw face-off, embarks on a relentless chase to finish off Peter, regardless of the damage inflicted on his physical form, a defining forefather of TERMINATOR, so is Brynner's no-blinking, no-expression stare. It goes without saying that a Sci-Fi project made in the analog era doesn't age pretty well for its ingrown reason, especially the laborious pixelated POV which looks starkly cockamamie and creaky, which explains exactly the raison d'être why its recent small-screen reboot is indeed right on time, WESTWORLD is a seam of ideas and conflicts, what we need is some visionary practitioner to mine it proper.

one-nine-eighty What a film! Michael Chrichton's screenplay adapted into movie format with Yul Brynner playing the role of his life (after "The King and I") with a great supporting cast including Richard Benjamin and James Brolin. A dystopian future. Theme parks are now robotic holiday resorts so real that they'd pass for real. Experiences from visits to fighting gardens in RomanWorld, to exploring the wild American frontier in WestWorld all needs and tastes are catered for here. But what happens when the robots decide they don't want slavery anymore? I have soo many fond memories of watching this as a child with glee. The story of the gunslinger in black hunting guests terrified and excited me so much. After re-watching it every couple of years I still have same enjoyment from this film. Yul Brynner is immaculate as the pre-terminator robot gone bad.Culturally this film asked a lot of valid questions prevalent at the time as mankind was integrating more and more with technology while being on the doorstep to various conflicts globally. Like some of the themes, some of the visuals are now very dated but don't forget, this is pre-CGI mainstream, this is the 1970's. Despite that this is and remains one of my favorite films and it's highly recommended. It has spawned a sequel ("FutureWorld") and it's own TV series. Enjoy!

evanston_dad Michael Crichton has a thing for amusement park catastrophes. 20 years before letting T. Rexes and raptors run amok in a little movie called "Jurassic Park," he wrote and directed this film about choose your own adventure theme parks peopled by robots that malfunction and start slaughtering the guests."Westworld" is a pretty entertaining sci-fi flick with modest ambitions, well acted by Richard Benjamin, who plays a nerdy dude who chooses to go to the wild west world and be a cowboy for a few days, and finds that he likes it, at least until Yul Bryner, as one of said robots, goes haywire and starts stalking him like the terminator. The screenplay misses an opportunity to make a seriously interesting character study out of the man Benjamin plays. He's courteous, quiet, and civilized by modern standards, but finds that once he's somewhere that allows him to act without consequences, he enjoys whoring, killing, and letting his id run amok. But, like I said, the movie has much more modest ambitions, and settles for being a straight up man against robot stand off. But what the film does deliver is entertaining, and justifies its status as a cult classic.Grade: B+

PetarDuric Story follows many characters that have decided to arrive in amusement park Delos and there are offered to choose which world will they go in. Mainly we are focused onto Peter and John that are in West World, but there are some scenes from Medieval World. Movie introduces us into everything with very shortly and explains a lot and then as hosts start to malfunction with higher rate things get really interesting. As John and Peter enjoy themselves, on the other side everybody at Delos is trying to figure out what is going on and how should they react and couple of bad decisions have caused everything to fall apart. Problem with malfunctioning was that host were not able to be controlled and that could be connected with explanation that was given to us before, how other androids are creating androids and how they do not understand everything. Then it got wild as androids started to kill everybody and people are desperate, on the other hand John and Peter encounter Gunslinger again and this time John dies and now Peter in shock is on run for his life. After a pretty nice chase and a lot of tense scenes he managed to get into facility of Delos and discover horrifying truth that everybody is gone. There are some issues with the movie like too many information about everything and how things in Delos works, such as we are never shown where they put androids only where they repair them and some other plot holes that should be filled to our better understanding of the world. Main focus of the movie is on "rebelion" of machines and how they tend to control everything eventually killing everybody and showing how humans are not as advanced as they are with the control room scene where they got locked and didn't manage to escape which led to their deaths. Benjamin, Brolin and Brynner totally stole the whole show with some pretty nice scenes. 3/4