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Starring Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, James Garner, M. Emmet Walsh, Susan Sarandon, Stockard Channing. ![[Photo]](/photos/twilight1.jpg) The American Heritage dictionary defines the word 'twilight' as "Any period or condition of decline following growth, glory, or success". Starring Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, James Garner, M. Emmet Walsh, Susan Sarandon, and Stockard Channing, an actor contingent whose average age is an astonishing 63 years old, it seems fairly obvious to me where writers Richard Russo and Robert Benton, who also directed Twilight, came up with the idea to name the movie. All jokes about the target demographic groups of Twilight--Arizona and Florida--aside, this was quite an average film; something that especially surprised me, considering that the last Russo/Benton/Newman collaboration resulted in the wonderfully refreshing 1994 hit, Nobody's Fool. Newman stars as a retired, divorced, former alcoholic private investigator, who is living with two retired Hollywood actors, Hackman and Sarandon. Hackman, weakened by cancer, asks Newman to deliver an unmarked package to a women for him. When Newman arrives at the woman's house, he is shot at by a fatally wounded, retired, police detective, Walsh. Newman does some snooping and uncovers a 20 year old mystery about what happened to Sarandon's former husband, who mysteriously disappeared right before she was going to divorce him. With the help of another retired private investigator, Garner, Newman does more poking around and unearths other facts and bodies, before learning what really happened to Sarandon's ex. This, in itself, wouldn't be so bothersome in the context of superior acting performances, but no one actor in Twilight stood out as doing a particularly noteworthy job. Reese Witherspoon, who has a bit role as Hackman and Sarandon's daughter, supplies her usual feisty spunk, but it is in a losing battle. Hackman himself was a particular disappointment, never doing much more than coughing up phlegm, grabbing his chest in reaction to a on-coming heart attack, or inhaling deeply from his oxygen mask. The selling points of Twilight come with the reputations of its very notable and very old stars. There aren't many reasons beyond loyal support to Newman, Hackman, or Sarandon to see this film.
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![[Photo]](/photos/twilight2.jpg)
The plot line, as it may sound on paper, is a tad dry. Newman's performance as a crusty PI, who may or may not have been shot in his "pecker", is nowhere near the caliber of performance he delivered in Nobody's Fool, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and Sarandon, Hackman, Channing all but completely wasted. The actual core of the mystery in Twilight, when explained, was of no great importance or interest either. I saw pretty much the same exact crime/mystery in John Sayles' 1996 film, Lone Star. However, in Lone Star, Sayles took great pains to make his style of direction visually stimulating, and his story material and characters crisp and original; two things which Benton and Russo just didn't spend any significant amount of time doing.