Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Legless Southern inventor Dr. Arliss Loveless plans to rekindle the Civil War by assassinating President Ulysses S. Grant. Only two men can stop him: gunfighter James West and master-of-disguise and inventor Artemus Gordon. The two must team up to thwart Loveless' plans.
Wild Wild West is a loud, overstuffed blockbuster that squanders a genuinely interesting steampunk-Western mashup premise. The plot is thin and episodic, held together by set pieces rather than coherent storytelling, and the buddy-comedy dynamic between Smith and Kline never fully gels. Kenneth Branagh chews scenery as Loveless but the script gives him little to work with beyond campy villainy. Visually the film has some flair — the giant mechanical spider and various steampunk contraptions are inventive production design — but the cinematography itself is fairly generic summer blockbuster fare. Its novelty comes from the steampunk-Western hybrid concept, which was genuinely distinctive for a mainstream 1999 release even if poorly executed. The ending is chaotic and unsatisfying, relying on spectacle over resolution.