Sometime in the future, people can act out their fantasies in resorts populated by human-like robots. Two vacationers, Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and his friend John Blane (James Brolin) holiday in the 'West World' theme park, where they get involved in wild west set pieces, including shoot-outs with a particular robot called the Gunslinger (Yul Brynner). Other vacationers go to other parts of the resort, 'Rome World' and 'Medieval World'. Of course, the robots go awry and decide to do away with the guests.
Writer-director Michael Crichton's cautionary tale about technology going bad is surprisingly clumsy at the start, given his prior experience as a film writer and director. There are slabs of dialogue between the vacationers explaining how the theme park and the robots work, followed by even more exposition between engineers as they try to figure out what is going wrong with the robots. One feels that Crichton strayed too far from the technology that he was familiar with because the technobabble is very vague and does not stand up to mild scrutiny.
Where he does well is to create a believable tone and setting on a very tight budget, with parts of the film reminiscent of 'The Andromeda Strain'. The blurred line between humans and robots is illustrated in one striking sequence, the night-time collection of the 'dead' robots by emotionless human technicians. The film also features some of the first CGI effects, showing the Gunslinger's point of view.
Yul Brynner, who has virtually no lines of dialogue, is the most memorable is the implacable Gunsligner. Dressed in a similar costume as his character Chris in 'The Magnificent Seven', Brynner simply dominates all his scenes. The chase through the deserted resort complex is one of the best ever made.
3 out of 5 stars.
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