Twilight's Last Gleaming

Gentlemen, we are now a superpower. Twilight's Last Gleaming is directed by Robert Aldrich and collectively written by Ronald M. Cohen, Edward Huebsch and Walter Wager (novel "Viper Three"). It stars Burt Lancaster, Burt Young, Richard Widmark, Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Charles Durning, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Jaeckel and William Marshall. Music is by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Robert B. Hauser. A renegade USAF general, Lawrence Dell (Lancaster), escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana and threatens to provoke World War 3 unless the President reveals details of what the Vietnam War was really all about... Twilight's Last Gleaming is the sort of tight gripping politico thriller that we could do with more of these days. Aldrich, a damn fine director of ensemble casts, slips on his angry hat and gets subversive as he implores the U.S. Presidency of the 70s to make do on the promise of an open armed government. At over two hours and twenty minutes in length, Aldrich asks his audience to buy into every single sentence being spoken. With so many characters involved in the story, we are treated to a number of split screen scenarios, this is where we can follow what is being said in the various key areas of the plot at the same time - and it's high quality. The pace never sags, and as the president (Durning) and his advisors sweat on Dell's very real threat, so too do we the audience as the paranoia of the story seeps out from every camera Aldrich uses. Still relevant today, this demands to be seen and evaluated by more like minded film fans. With a cast responding in full to a shrewd director, and a story of great worth that builds to a crushing finale, Twilight's Last Gleaming is well worth your time. 8/10

40-odd years on, and this still has a certain resonance about it even now. Burt Lancaster in a disgraced US Air Force General who, along with two colleagues, escapes from jail and takes control of an active nuclear missile silo with 9 deadly missiles at his disposal. Richard Widmark, his former commanding officer is now on the opposing side as they play a cleverly constructed, well paced and genuinely quite menacing game of cat and mouse. The plot thickens significantly when the President (Charles Durning) learns that aside from the usual money and aeroplane demands from their antagonists, there is a requirement from him to make a statement condemning the brutality of war in South East Asia; a secret document stating the facts of which, horrify this decent, honourable fellow. The story is compelling and the three principals generate a considerable degree of tension for much of the film. Unfortunately it really does run out of steam after about 100 minutes, as the moralising and frankly rather depressing politics kick in taking the story down a big road marked "preposterous" to a really disappointing - indeed, implausible, conclusion that undoes quite a bit of the earlier quality of this Robert Aldrich film. It is certainly worth watching though - I suppose it could happen!!

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John Chard

CinemaSerf