Westworld (Retro Movie Review)

Review by Ken from Honolulu

Fair warning; this review contains spoilers.

“Westworld” was made in 1973 by director Michael Crichton.  Starring Yul Brenner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin, it tells the story of an amusement park that enables the rich vacationers who visit it to live out their fantasies through the use of robots.  Two visitors choose to embark on a wild west-style adventure, but when the park’s computer breaks down, they find themselves stalked by a rogue gunslinger robot.

I give this film a quality score of 7.0 and a relevance score of 7.0.  This was a high budget film in its day and used A-list actors of the time, but it was Michael Crichton’s first film as a director.  Crichton’s better-known films, such as “Jurassic Park” and “The Andromeda Strain,” show the progression of his ability over time, and this early effort, while still talented, doesn’t measure up to that later mark.

The practical effects used throughout this movie are very good, employing the imagination of the filmmakers to bring the story to life.  At one point the gunslinger character gets acid thrown in his face and his face starts melting.  This was achieved by putting powdered Alka-Seltzer in the actor’s makeup, so that when he was later doused with water the result was convincingly bubbly and oozing.  When characters are shot, rather than flying across the room, they react in a more realistic manner, seeming stunned for a moment before attempting to shoot back.  The only effect in this movie that didn’t look good was the “blood” shown, which unfortunately looks more like red paint.  This dragged down my quality score, but didn’t seriously affect my enjoyment of the film.

The acting in this film is also top notch.  Yul Brenner is particularly excellent as the gunslinger robot.  If you’ve never seen him act before, I suggest you also watch “The King and I,” “Invitation to a Gunfighter,” and “The Magnificent Seven.”  As a matter of fact, Brenner wears the same costume in this movie that he wore in “The Magnificent Seven.”  In my opinion, Yul Brenner makes a very scary robot.  His smile when shooting down one of the human vacationers is especially creepy.  He goes from looking smug and secretive before the fatal shot to all-out menace as the surviving human flees.  Also well-done is a moment when he is tracking his human prey using infared vision and the man ducks behind a torch.  Brenner’s subsequent look of confusion is perfect.  The human being pursued conveys emotion well, too.  You can really feel his fear, his frustration, and the adrenaline pumping through him as he desperately tries to get away.

One thing I like about the old sci-fi films like this one is to see what they got right and what they got wrong about the future.  This movie mentions computer viruses in 1973, when viruses were almost unheard of.  At that time they were still using punch cards to get information into computers, and the computers used in the movie don’t even have as much computing power as an older flip phone, much less a modern smart phone.  Another small but accurate prediction of future technology is a flat-screen TV visible in the hovercraft that transports the characters to Westworld.

Unfortunately, there is little to no character development in this movie.  They give a little bit of background on one of the people, but not any of the others, and the film focuses not on what these people are normally like, but on how they choose to throw their morals out the window because they went on vacation. For example, the characters go to a saloon that is also a whorehouse.  As they’re going upstairs with two of the girls a gunfight starts outside.  One of the guys says something like, “Should we go upstairs and have sex, or should we go outside, get into the gunfight and kill people?”  The characters give no thought to what they should or shouldn’t do, only to what they feel like doing at the moment.

There are many potential discussion points raised in this film.  When I first saw this movie as a teenager, I was able to have some great talks about it with my friends from church.  We discussed whether it is a sin to have sex with a robot prostitute thinking it is a human, or whether it is a sin to kill a robot thinking it is a human.  We also evaluated the danger of throwing your morals out the window for the sake of something as trivial as a vacation.  From a film-lover’s perspective, it’s also interesting to note the themes in this movie that would later be elaborated on in “Jurassic Park,” “Jaws,” and “The Terminator.”

This is not a movie I would recommend for little kids because of the violence, but children over 10 have probably already seen much worse on broadcast TV.  There is no profanity present, and the one sex scene is very tame by today’s standards (showing the couple involved only from the shoulders up).

Overall, “Westworld” is an interesting film, and a fun one to watch.  Fans of classic sci-fi should definitely check this one out.

Rated PG-13 for stylized action violence and sexual content.

Quality: 7.0/10

Relevance: 7.0/10