Twilight
 | Directed by Robert Benton Starring: Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing Paramount, 1998, DVD Customer Rating: 37 reviews Recommend |
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A retired private investigator agrees to help his star friends and become embroiled in a dangerous and complex murder mystery. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 04/11/2006 Starring: Paul Newman Susan Sarandon Run time: 96 minutes Rating: R Director: Robert Burton
If it hadn't been released in 1998 with a veteran cast of Hollywood's finest, you could swear that Twilight was a movie from the 1940s — the kind of intelligent mystery that would've made Humphrey Bogart feel right at home. To be sure, that was exactly the intention of director and co-writer Robert Benton (in collaboration with Nobody's Fool writer Richard Russo), but the film's blessing is also its curse. Benton and Russo are so enamored of vintage mystery plots and characters that their movie nearly succumbs to the burden of old-fashioned familiarity. As the title suggests, the movie's aging characters, led by Newman as a private eye who's almost literally on his last legs, are all on the downhill of life, their Hollywood glory days behind them. Newman's character lives in the luxury home of two fading stars (Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon) who may or may not be connected to a murder plot that also involves one of Newman's old colleagues (James Garner). Whether they're literally in their final days (as in the case of Hackman's character) or just grasping for some comfort in their twilight years, these characters interact with the kind of worldly, intelligent dialogue that was common in the better movies of Hollywood's past. But while Twilight gives Newman yet another role to fit into like a favored old suit, the movie's so low-key that some viewers may find it hard to sit through. That's a shame, because the bombastic, frenetically paced films that dominated the 1990s may have diminished our collective capacity to appreciate the solid, character-driven movie tradition that Twilight attempts to revive. — Jeff Shannon
Title: Twilight
Sales Rank: 2898 in DVD
Actor: Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing
Director: Robert Benton
Studio: Paramount, 1998-10-07, Theatrical Release: 1998-03-06
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC, Acpect Ratio 1.85:1
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled)
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Region Code: 1
Running Time: 96 minutes
Package Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches, 0.25 pounds
- The Best and The Brightest Shine in Twilight
- When I first saw Twilight in 1998 I knew I was watching a valuable classic. We need a few more like Twilight these days to add intelligence that recent movies with action and adventure lack. We need less high-tech-special-affects and more intriguing dialogue which includes humor, wit and wisdom that Twilight provides in abundance.
Listing the cast only was… More reviews
- The Things You Don't Think About
- The plot is a standard one. Our private detective, Harry Ross, makes a simple delivery for a friend and discovers a murder. Then he discovers several more. The police suspect him, but let him go. He wades through the confusion, taking the occasional beating. Finally, he solves the mystery. Then re-solves it. We've seen the plot before. But… More reviews
- Film noir for the everyman and woman
- Back in Feb '08 I found out about this movie because I was in a Paul Newman phase of movie watching. It turns out that two of my other favorite movie stars James Garner and Gene Hackman were also in it, so I purchased it. I don't know what the reviewers of the day back in 1998 were thinking but I think that they were not… More reviews
- An All-Star Cast, a Good Story
- I was in the mood for an old-school style murder/detective flick, and plugged this one in. 60 seconds into the film I get hit with a MAJOR "double" topless scene starring Reese Witherspoon (10 years younger). Gratuitous? Anyway, after re-gathering and re-trenching from that, I did indeed settle down into a Humphrey Bogartesque murder mystery.
Maybe the… More reviews
- Solid performances by top actors
- This film features fine performances from screen legend Paul Newman, up and comer Reese Witherspoon, and more. This is a better film than the reviews it typically gets from most professional reviewers. Well worth watching, especially if you like the Paul Newman performance in Nobody's Fool.… More reviews
