Wild Wild West
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Starring: Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh and Selma
Hayek.
Running Time: 107 minutes
The year is 1869, just a few short years after the U.S. Civil War, and a Confederate mad man has kidnaped the nation's leading scientists to create a super-weapon to destroy the country. President Ulysses S. Grant sends his two best guns-for-hire to thwart the diabolical plan and save the day. Our two heroes are former Civil War captain, Jim West (Will Smith) and the ingenious U.S. Marshall Artemis Gordon (Kevin Kline). Bar fights, train escapades, and mass destruction courtesy of a giant, mechanized, fire-spewing spider follow in due order. The west is wild, indeed.
The colossal success of Will Smith's two previous summer blockbusters, 1996's Independence Day and 1997's Men In Black, has made him one of the most likeable and bankable Hollywood stars of the decade. If Wild, Wild West goes on to become one of this summer's box office hits, it will assure him a place in the big money movie business well into the next century, if it hasn't already. That triple-crown victory feat, however, seems less than likely. The best of the bunch, Men in Black was quirky, amusing, and visually interesting. Independence Day was insipid but packed with patriotic, entertaining action and whiz-bang effects. Regrettably, Wild Wild West has none of the above comedy, action, or amazing special effects, and adds up to a whole lot less overall. Even Will Smith, who has an extraordinary cinematic charisma to overcompensate for his untested acting ability, is wasted in a film that affords him too few of his funny, trademark one-liners. He may be cucumber cool as a cowboy, but he is no replacement for Robert Conrad who originated the role. But for those interested, we do get to see Smith's bum.
Although Kevin Kline is one of today's most interesting and talented actors, as West's sidekick, Artemis Gordon, he is utterly wasted. Ever the master of disguise, even his ruse as a brothel hussy is lackluster when it should be amusing. If you like gadgets, the Artemis Gordon of the original series always had some clever ones. We see only a few here, and most of them are given away in the previews. We don't see his backside.
Selma Hayek as damsel-in-distress Rita Escobar, may be about as comely a damsel as you can find, but she never seems much in distress. She lights up the screen in all of her scenes, but she has little to do besides heave her hefty cleavage. In fact, her role is not much removed from those in the many Robert Rodriguez movies like Desperado where she got her start. This picture, however, will garner her the wider exposure to worldwide audiences she needs to hopefully make some better films. Speaking of exposure, we also see her derriere. Twice.
Then there's distinguished British actor and director of mostly Shakespearean magnitude, Kenneth Branagh. Unfortunatly, he seems out of place as the dastardly, legless villain Dr. Arliss Loveless. In a madcap role that should be clever, Branagh is merely overstuffed, and his Southern accent never quite works. Although a verbal sparring match with Jim West provides a brief bit of funny patter, most of the rest of Loveless's dialogue is as embarrassingly nonsensical as Branagh is usually articulate. Perhaps Branagh needed the money to finance another of his lavish Shakespearean remakes? Being completely without a lower torso, Loveless has no pantaloons to drop for our viewing pleasure.
Just like this summer's other expected blockbuster, The Phantom Menace, decent acting these days has again become secondary to action and effects. Unfortunately, Wild Wild West not only turns the actors into little more than cartoon characters, it fails to deliver an exciting story for them to inhabit. The plot is so well foreshadowed at every turn that nothing surprises. The action does not build to a satisfying conclusion mostly because you know exactly what's going to happen in this paint-by-numbers feature. There is only one cool special effect gimmick, and the impressive giant tarantula is not enough to sustain the movie. And two scenes involving a decapitated head are just too gross for what could have been a family-oriented film.
However, much of the fault for this movie's many woes lies squarely on a boring script and not merely on the lack of special effects. Of course, critics always complain about lazy scripts and shallow acting in blockbusters, but here no attempt at real action or comedy can balance the comment. Wild Wild West is not without its entertaining moments, but in the end there are just too few of them. Truly this movie's makers have been caught with their pants down on this one.
At the very least, Will Smith is provided yet another opportunity to write a hit song. This one successfully borrows a great riff from Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." Too bad the accompanying credits were dull.
Remaking the successful Wild Wild West series into a feature film seemed like an excellent idea. But, then again, so did The Avengers. So little care seemed to go into the making of this movie, it's as if everyone involved merely wanted to dupe the audience, duck the critics, and take the money and run. Maybe all the gratuitous mooning is the movie's subliminal nanny-nanny-boo-boo-to-you. Wild Wild West is as bare a wasteland as the desert shots in the film. A pretty place for a postcard, but hardly worth the visit.
Steven Stuart Baldwin (7/6/99)
