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MOVIE REVIEW

Twilight

MPA Rating: R-Rating (MPA) for violence, language and some sexuality.

Reviewed by: Brian Nigro
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Very Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Drama
Length: 94 min.
Year of Release: 1998
USA Release:
Featuring Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon
Director Robert Benton
Producer
Distributor
Distributor: Paramount Pictures Corporation. Trademark logo.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS

Gratuitous.
That’s an accurate description of “Twilight”.
Gratuitous nudity (which reveals a big continuity error).
Gratuitous profanity.
Gratuitous story lines that go nowhere.
Gratuitous characters that go nowhere.
And a plot that doesn’t make sense.

Paul Newman stars in “Twilight” as a retired cop who becomes tangled in a blackmail scheme of a bedridden Gene Hackman and his flirtatious wife Susan Sarandon. Newman lives with them in a posh Los Angeles home for no other reason than he rescued Hackman’s daughter Reese Witherspoon from a bad man in Mexico. That bad man (Lieve Shrieber) is just out of prison and after Newman—although, Newman conveniently foils the bad guys with ironic ease, like he’s the Fonz on “Happy Days.”

On the home front, Newman openly and blatantly commits adultery with Sarandon. (And, oh, is Ms. Sarandon ever out to lunch in this role, I won’t elaborate.) And yet, in a pointlessly gratuitous plot thread ripped from “Cop Land”, Stockard Channing plays a cop who still has her eye on him.

“Hear that?” Stockard Channing asks Paul Newman in one scene, as she flushes a toilet. “That’s my job in the police force.”

Actually, I’d say that’s something else going down the drain. Paul Newman already did this movie before, in “Harper” (1966), a good rainy-day video rental. That’s all I could think about.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
I agree with the reviewer and with the other comments already posted. With three Oscar winners in the leads plus James Garner in a supporting role, one would expect something better than this. A waste of time at best. My Ratings: [2/2]
Brett Willis, age 49
Vile, vulgar. A total waste of time. We left in the middle.
Mr. and Mrs. R. Miller