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Wednesday, Feb 16, 2005
7:30pm
Westworld
Lodged somewhere between a virtual video game and a Vegas-style theme park, Westworld is the ultimate amusement-for $1,000 you can ride your darkest desires right into the sunset. It's brawling at the saloon and shootouts at high noon with the leather-clad automata who sidle around this ersatz Tombstone. A wussy businessman, Martin (Richard Benjamin), comes to Westworld to indulge his fantasy of being a brutish and whoring desperado. He's having a rowdy old time putting slugs in Yul Brynner, a robotic bad guy with unnerving blue eyes and a computer-controlled Waynesian waddle, until a virus visits Westworld and the Pentium-powered gunslinger starts shooting back. Much as he would do in Jurassic Park (1993), in this sci-fi oater Michael Crichton draws a bead on the consequences of desire without responsibility. As though anticipating the emergence of video games with their immersive imaginings, Westworld suggests that even permissible point-and-shoot has a reckless recoil.
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