by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Robert Aldrich
CAST: Burt Lancaster, Charles Durning, Richard Widmark, Paul Winfield, Burt Young, Melvyn Douglas, Joseph Cotten, Richard Jaeckel, John Ratzenberger
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 80% Fresh
PLOT: A renegade USAF general takes over an ICBM silo and threatens to provoke World War III unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War.
Twilight’s Last Gleaming, one of Robert Aldrich’s last films, is a cleverly constructed Cold War thriller whose pointed message about the Vietnam War nearly torpedoes the suspense. The political message is hammered home in a scene that goes on for a bit too long with people speaking dialogue that feels hammy and trite. But the movie surrounding this one scene is good enough that I would still recommend it to anyone in the market for something off the beaten track.
The movie is set in 1981, four years after it was released, so no one could draw any real-life parallels between the characters and people in real life. In an opening sequence that feels reminiscent of Die Hard (1988), General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) and his team of military ex-cons manage to infiltrate and take command of a US ICBM missile silo in Montana. While I highly doubt it would be as easy as portrayed in the film, Aldrich films the sequence so that I got caught up in the suspense of the narrative instead of worrying about pesky details. (If there’s a drawback to these and other sequences featuring military hardware and installations, it’s the overall low-budget feel to the sets and props; everything looks like it was shot on a TV soundstage instead of a big-budget film set.)
Once inside, Dell makes his demands: $20 million for each of his remaining team (Burt Young and Paul Winfield), the President must read the transcript of a secret meeting held just after the Vietnam war started, and the President must hand himself over as a hostage to secure their escape. Otherwise, he’ll launch nine Titan ICBMs at their targets.
This creates a little tension among the would-be terrorists. Winfield and Young couldn’t care less about the secret meeting, but Dell is adamant. Meanwhile, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) formulates a plan to eliminate Dell and his crew using a “tiny” nuclear device, the President (Charles Durning) agonizes over the secret transcript, and his best friend and aide uses some “tough love” to get him to make a decision.
Despite the fakeness of the surroundings, I was absorbed by the thriller elements in Twilight’s Last Gleaming. I would compare them to the best parts of WarGames (1983) and The China Syndrome (1979). There is some impressively impenetrable technobabble about booby traps and inhibitor cables and fail-safe systems that I just rolled with. The plan involving that “tiny” nuclear device leads up to a sequence that I would compare favorably with any contemporary thriller you can name.
One of the ways Aldrich achieves this effect is through the use of split-screens…LOTS of split-screens. It starts at the beginning of the film with two screens. Then there are moments with three split screens, two on top and one in the bottom section. Then, during the most intense sequence of the film, we get four splits in each corner of the screen. At first, I found it disorienting, but it absolutely works when it most needs to. (I’m trying not to give away too many plot details, so excuse the vagueness.) I don’t know that I would want to watch an entire movie like this (Timecode, 2000), but in small doses, it’s very effective.
Where the movie bogs down is the middle section of the film when the President expresses his disapproval of the contents of the secret transcript Dell wants publicized. It’s a bit theatrical to believe a sitting American President would be this vocal about his feelings in the middle of a dire crisis. I think the scene would have played just as well if we had gotten a general idea of the transcript, or even if the contents had NEVER been revealed to the audience. It would have been a perfect Macguffin, leaving viewers free to imagine anything they want. The truth about Kennedy’s assassination? Area 51? Pearl Harbor was an inside job? The Super Bowl really IS fixed? Who knows?
Instead, the President insists on reading a portion of it out loud to his Cabinet members, enlisting them to read certain lines. While I admire Aldrich’s intent (to send a cinematic protest to the architects of the Vietnam war), the scene nearly brought the movie to a stop, which is deadly when dealing with a suspense thriller.
But, like I said, the rest of the movie is so good, I am compelled to let it slide. Later, we get surprise attacks, snipers, helicopters, a crafty fake-out involving torture, and an ending that is as cynical as they come, but which felt like the best way out of the situation for everyone involved…except for the American people, but that’s another story. Twilight’s Last Gleaming feels virtually forgotten, and that’s a shame. Aldrich directs this movie with a lot of passion for the material and milks every ounce of suspense he can with the tools at hand. If you’re prepared to overlook that middle section, you’ll get a kick out of this movie.
P.S. Look fast for an unexpected appearance by William Hootkins, aka “Porkins” from Star Wars (1977).
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 