Westworld is an excellent film, which combines solid entertainment, chilling topicality, and superbly intelligent serio-comic story values. Michael Crichton’s original script is as superior as his direction.
Crichton’s Westworld is one of three gigantic theme parks built in what is left of the American outdoors; the others are ‘Romanworld’ and ‘Medievalworld’. For $1,000 a day, flown in tourists may indulge their highest and lowest appetities. Automated robots move about as real people. These automatons may be raped, shot to death, befriended, betrayed, etc. They never strike back.
To this world come Richard Benjamin and James Brolin. They have picked the western-themed park, where they switch to levis, pack revolvers and live out the screen life depicted by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and other actioner stars. Yul Brynner plays a black-clothed bad guy whom Benjamin kills in a saloon confrontation. All the while supervisor Alan Oppenheimer oversees the entire world and its creatures.
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But suddenly things begin to go wrong. An unidentified computer casualty begins to spread like a plague. The automatons strike back.
