Twilight's Last Gleaming

3/22/2020

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

6/4/2023

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