Flak Magazine: Review of Wild Wild West

In one of those great did-we-see-the-same-movie? mysteries, Wild Wild West is getting worse reviews than The General's Daughter. Honestly, it's enough to make you want to write film criticism.

Wild Wild West is far from perfect; it only barely enters the sphere of good. But it is good, just not nearly as good as it should have been and certainly not the must-see event Warner Bros. was expecting from the Men in Black team.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld came into helming summer blockbusters by way of directing The Addams Family movies and Get Shorty, ventures undertaken only after a very notable career as the cinematographer of choice for filmmakers like the Coen Brothers. He brings to his films the macabre sensibilities of Terry Gilliam or Jeunet et Caro and marries them to the crowd-pleasing antics necessary for, say, a Will Smith movie. Wild Wild West, though not his best work, is his best-yet balance of these two specialties, a combination burlesque and grotesque the likes of which have never been seen in such mainstream fare.

With its excellent credit sequence and scantily-clad female villains with names like Amazonia and Munitia, Wild West West clearly wants to invoke the memory of the fun Bond films, and sure enough, it's a better kick than either of Pierce Brosnan's escapades by a long shot. In a successful but uncreative variation on the buddy cop theme, Smith and Kevin Kline play James West and Artemis Gordon, two suave law enforcement officials on opposite sides of multiple pairs of tracks (race, temperament, skill sets) enlisted to hunt down the mad genius/amputee Arliss Loveless, portrayed by Kenneth Branagh, who has kidnaped the nation's top scientists so he can build a giant mechanical tarantula with which to topple the pillars of government.

While a slightly more cerebral approach to the same old comic book material would have been nice, at least Sonnenfeld is true to the material. In what seems like a response to the brilliant Crayola noir of Dick Tracy as shot by Vittorio Storaro, masterful cinematographer Michael Ballhaus has created one of the best evocations of young boys' four-color fantasies ever commited to film. Throw-away shots–Smith walking along the roof of a train, or framed with Kline against a mountainous desert background–are burned into your corneas thanks to their gorgeous coloration. The movie is never dull to look at.

Unfortunately, it can be quite dull to sit through, as Sonnenfeld and screenwriters Brent Maddock and Jeffrey Price have also swiped the stuttering, unmotivated pacing of the worst comic books and Bond films. Sonnenfeld's comedic sense has always been so sharp that it's hard to say what happened, although significant studio interference is a good guess.

The epitome of all this is the climactic fight scene. It's filled with madcap flourishes, like a duke-out with a man who, for no apparent reason, has a railroad spike through his head, or Loveless' slow collapse as the hydraulic fluid is drained from his undercarriage. But all of these touches seem crudely stapled onto the film, like they were stuffed in to fill a punch quota or required death toll. With the exception of a cute final shot, the whole last 20 minutes of the movie, starting with the arrival of our heroes onto that arachnidan machine, are horrible. Comedy needs to be trim, and this is the worst kind of bloat.

Speaking of excess, this is the most unlikely PG-13 I've ever seen. Early on, the plot is advanced when Kline's Gordon shines light through the head of a decapitated scientist, but violence is the smaller part of the issue. The conceit of Loveless, both amputed and castrated in a wartime blast, is that he has finely honed voyeurism as an outlet for his lusts.

Resultantly, scenes transpire in brothels, women are always scampering around in lingerie that give preference to near-nude backsides and S&M gear litters Loveless' bedroom. Most unbelievably, Loveless proclaims his virility to West and Gordon by going off on a rant about the mechanized sexual paraphernalia he's developed to please women; did the MPAA figure Branagh's accent, vocabulary and speed of speech would cause the text to be lost on the teenage crowd? However it happened, getting away with this rating is the most outrageous joke Sonnenfeld pulls off.

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)