Wild Wild West

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. With Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek. The two best hired guns in the West must save President Grant from the clutches of a nineteenth-century inventor-villain.

"Wild Wild West'' is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen. You know something has gone wrong when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset.

Wild Wild West summary of box office results, charts and release information and related links.

Parents need to know that Wild Wild West is a big, loud, coarse adventure flick, with interesting visual styling including steampunk gadgets and an Old West setting. There's lots of cartoonish violence, including characters who are suddenly punched in the face and shot in the gut and then bleed gorily while their bodies are summarily dumped in the water to be fed to "the crabs." The viewer sees many dead bodies, and main characters are frequently in mortal jeopardy such as being suspended under a moving train, though such hijinks are usually played for laughs. There are many sexual situations as well, with characters rolling around intimately (no nudity), and prostitutes offering sexual services for pay. There is also racial humor: at one point Will Smith shucks-and-jives like a slave, and a group of white Southerners threaten to lynch him while Smith calls them "rednecks." Cursing is kept to a minimum, save for a few S-words, and a lot of coarse language like "boobies." The viewer is told that some characters are good and others bad, but all are violent and prone to trickery.

Peter Bradshaw: Will Smith and Kevin Kline are no Butch and Sundance

Will Smith and Kevin Kline star in Warner Bros.' 'Wild Wild West' -- featuring Kenneth Branagh and Selma Hayek. This summer it's a whole new West! Starts July 2nd.

Special government agent James West, long on charm and wit, and special government agent Artemus Gordon, a master of disguises and a brilliant inventor of gadgets large and small, are each sent to track down the diabolical genius Dr. Arliss Loveless. Loveless is plotting to assassinate the President of the United States with the aid of his monstrously huge walking weapon-transport vehicle called The Tarantula. West and Gordon begin as competitors but soon pool their talents to become a wily team of operatives who trust each other... most of the time.

Read the Empire review of Wild Wild West. Find out everything you need to know about the film from the world's biggest movie destination.

Wild Wild West is a 1999 American steampunk western action comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. It was written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (whose previous collaborations include the Short Circuit and Tremors franchises), along with Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. A big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West, it stars Will Smith, Kevin Kline (who appears in dual roles as one of the two protagonists Artemus Gordon and as President Ulysses S. Grant), Kenneth Branagh and Salma Hayek.