That was an excellent one.

People are voting emotionally.

Nice effects though.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

1977 was a year of some high profile bombs which later achieved some cult status such as Cross of Iron, Sorcerer and Twilight's Last Gleaming. This partially came about from the competition from a certain film called Star Wars which offered a more optimistic and hopeful cinematic experience. As someone who has mixed feeling on New Hollywood, these movies don't deserve to be ignored the way they are and are some of the best hidden gems of the 1970's. Likewise the trashy, conspiracy theory concept of Twilight's Last Gleaming would be the ire of many high brow critics but it's the high concept which makes Twilight's Last Gleaming irresistible and helps the viewer to look past the implausibility of the premise. This is a film which trades it's logic for emotion and is aware of its own implausibility ("How in the hell does some joker walk into a top secret installation and get control of the most sophisticated weapons system in the world?"). As a layman it feels believable within the context of the movie but it's always fun to ask, could it happen in real life?Twilight's Last Gleaming features an ironic use of 'My Country Tis of Thee' during the opening and closing credits; it's not exactly a happy movie. Oddly however Jerry Goldsmith's score sounds like something from an action/adventure blockbuster and is even John Williams like at time. The action takes place over a single day in what can be described as Dog Day Afternoon like scenario in a missile silo for a film which you could mistaken as being based on a stage play with its handful of sets and lengthy scenes. On my first viewing I wasn't convinced the running time was justified but watching it again I was hooked. Twilight's Last Gleaming takes is set in the future year of November 16th, 1981 although it's not stated why it's set on this particular date.Burt Lancaster was still getting some great roles into the 1970's. He still had his mojo and now with a beat up face to boot. As one of the character's in the film puts it, "with that rhetoric he could be elected governor in ten states". Lancaster's role of General Lawrence Dell draws parallels to his role of General Scott in the political thriller Seven Days In May; a megalomaniac going to extremes in order to fulfil his agenda despite the risks to the United States and the world as a whole. He may be trying to provide a catharsis to the pain and anger of Vietnam veterans but at what cost? Lancaster and co star Paul Winfred have an enjoyable chemistry between them and provide comic relief with their back and forth. It's interesting seeing Lancaster sparring off with actors much younger than him as well as dropping some F-bombs. On top of that there is something surreal about watching Burt Lancaster drinking a can of Coca-Cola. Product placements for Coca-Cola appear at several points throughout the film with Coke vending machines in clear sight; I guess they have to answer to The Coca-Cola Company.Twilight's Last Gleaming consists of veteran actors talking some serious stuff. The discussions in the Oval Office scene are alot to take in on one viewing ("Ralph! Are you comparing Vietnam to Hitler?!" - It always goes back to Hitler). The movie is full of entertaining one liners - "It's like Star Trek all over again", "Come on this isn't Disneyland" and my favourite, "There are no midgets in the United States Air Force". The oldest among this cast is Melvyn Douglas, the prime example of an actor who got better with age as clearly evident here; full of powerful subdue comments and monologues ("The beginning of the end of mankind, in graphic black and white").The film's extensive use of split screen works remarkable well and does not feel like a gimmick creating a unique viewing experience; the split screen here is clearly not an afterthought. The entire sequence in which missiles are about to be launched is presented entirely in split screen with events being monitored in three different locations in order to heighten the tension. The scene itself is one scary sequence with the pandemonium and the sight of the missiles rising (the model of the silo exterior is shown on screen just briefly enough not to notice they are models). The President himself describes it best - "The opening of the doors of hell".The President in Twilight's Last Gleaming played by Charles Durning is not an idealistic representation of a president nor is he massively charming and ultimately a bit drab. However we do get to see his human side during a scene in which he talks to his General alone and admits to being scared out of his mind. At the beginning of the film there is a scene in which the President has a conversation with a character played by Roscoe Lee Brown. It doesn't have purpose in the plot but does set the tone of the White House scenes and foreshadows the rest of the movie ("If I grant Zabat sanctuary, I give approval to every dissident with a cause and a gun").The ending of Twilight's Last Gleaming all comes down to the question of whether or not society can deal with the truth? With widespread distrust in the government starting with the assassination of JFK and not getting any better with the Watergate scandal, would the President's cabinet reveal the movie's purported truth on the Vietnam War to the American public like he ordered before being shot down in an attempt to take down the two men holding him hostage. However was his death even an accident or did they intend to let him be shot down in order to keep the truth hidden; it does seem odd that no medical aid is given to him after being shot. The ending is left ambiguous and the viewer is left to think about it.

Twilight's Last Gleaming is a rather far fetched and fanciful tale about a rogue general taking over a missile silo, isolating it from remote control at the Pentagon and White House and having 9 Titan missiles with atomic warheads at your command. Burt Lancaster who was railroaded into a murder conviction to silence him escapes with Paul Winfield, Burt Young, and William Smith and they take over the missile silo and issue demands.The film is fascinating in one respect how this crisis is isolated from the knowledge of the public. The deliberations over the Cuban Missile Crisis had nothing on this and even that went public. The closest real happening in our history was when Grover Cleveland went missing for about 5 weeks to have cancer surgery and that never came out in his lifetime. Of course it worked out far better for Grover than it did for this president.Charles Durning plays the fictional president David Stevens and what Lancaster demands of him is not just the usual money extortion. He wants a document read from a National Security Council meeting from the Vietnam war years which would have a calamitous impact on a lot of people and our national credibility involving our very reasons for being in Vietnam. Durning did not even know the existence of it as his presidency is way in the future. But sly old time Defense Secretary Melvyn Douglas knows and as it works in these cases his reputation and national security seem to blend in.Another sly man from the past is Air Force General Richard Widmark who was once Lancaster's superior. Other members of the cabinet include Secretary Of State Joseph Cotten and Attorney General William Marshall.Despite Oscar winners and big box office names like Widmark and Cotten, walking away with the acting honors here is Charles Durning as the president who is thrust into a crisis involving the distant past for him. His scenes with military aide Gerald O'Loughlin have some real feel and poignancy for both men.Twilight's Last Gleaming though far fetched is well worth a look.

Very good pre-apocalypse/conspiracy/anti-Vietnam war film. Some genuinely suspenseful moments. Technically superb quality in the print I saw which actually shows so much detail that the film sets have an undefinable slightly phony/cheap feel about them – particularly the scenes set in the Oval office and on board Air Force One (although this might be due to the film getting a little dated now). The characterisation of the President is also slightly odd and came across to me as untrustworthy although we are supposed to believe he has a change of heart over releasing classified information. The ending is ambiguous – was the promise kept or broken? A long film it does not outstay it's welcome and is quite gripping to watch.It would be interesting to see this film remade today with current technology (both in terms of film- making SFX and also from the point of view of current USA missile firing technology).Good use of split-screen to show simultaneous action (and even overlapping dialogue). This works particularly well for the scenes involving security cameras outside the silo.

**SPOILERS** Breaking out of a Montana military prison disgraced Air Force General Lawerance Dell, Burt Lancaster, and three other escapees Wills Powell, Paul Winfied, Augie Garvas, Burt Young, and John Hoxly, William Smith, plan to take over an Air Force missile base at the US Air Force 341 Missile Wing at Malmstrom. Being outspoken against the US military policies in the Vietnam War Gen. Dell was later railroaded, by refusing to be quite, into prison on a trumped up murder charge.Dell intends to hold the country hostage by threatening to launch the nine Titan Nuclear Missiles from Silo III which he and his men took over unless the government, whom he feel betrayed him as well as the American people, comes clean in its policies of one ups-men-ship with the Soviet Union since the end of WWII.Dell's plan gets a bit off base when hot headed Hoxey, who hated those in authority, gets himself blown away by Dell himself after he started shooting up the place-Silo III-just to gun down the Air Force personnel stationed there. With him now in total control of Silo III Dell gives the order to launch its, as he calls them, nine birds-the Titan Missiles-unless the government through President David T. Stevens, Charles Durning, makes public this top secret government report. This super secret government document will spill the beans in what the real reasons were for the US to get itself involved in Vietnam as well as other military conflicts since the end of WWII: In the USA showing the Soviet Union that it was more then willing to go as far as it will go in its total disregard of human life, even the lives of its own servicemen, in order to win the "War of Ideas", not that of national security and self-preservation, with it!A bit over the top at the time of its release, two years after the War in Vietnam ended, the movie "Twilight's last Gleaming" is far more shocking now that it was back then in 1977. The thought of the US Government, and those in power, getting the country into a destructive war just for political and idealistic,not for purely self-defense and self-preservation,reasons was considered the wildest of left wing fantasies back then.The second part of Dell's plan is to have him and Powell, the only survivor of the Dell breakout team, receive $10,000,000.00 and flown out on the USA, on Air Force One no less, to a country of their choice! With President David T. Stevens as their hostage who would be wasted on the spot if anything goes wrong! The surprise hero of the film turns out to be President Stevens himself. It's Pres. Stevens who was far more outraged in what his country has been doing, playing chicken with the USSR and Communist China since the end of the Second World War which those in his cabinet and top advisers kept from him. These power games had already cost the lives of over 100,000 US servicemen fighting wars in both Vietnam and Korea which, according to the secret government document, were either unwindable or not meant to be won in the first place!Despite the movies downbeat ending it definitely hits the spot in showing how power in high places in government, both in the US and USSR, is used in secret for the most nefarious of reasons. With what's been happening in the world in bogus and unnecessary wars-that the US has been involved in- since the releases of "Twilights Last Gleaming" it's a shame that the film's star-Burt Lancaster-and its no holds barred director-Robert Aldridge- are not around to see just how right they were in making it!