Twilight's Last Gleaming

Directed by Robert Aldrich, this 1977 thriller adapts Walter Wager's novel, though Aldrich refused to make it without overhauling the story first. Burt Lancaster plays renegade Air Force General Dell, who escapes a military prison, seizes an ICBM silo in Montana, and makes two demands: ten million dollars, and that the President release a classified document proving the US government kept fighting in Vietnam knowing the war was unwinnable, purely to demonstrate anti communist resolve. Aldrich said he wanted an Ellsberg mentality in the character, a commanding officer enraged not at protesters but at the misuse of the military. The film's bitterest irony played out in distribution: the American distributor cut twenty four minutes, ostensibly to tighten the pace, and what got cut were precisely the scenes explaining that the Pentagon entered Vietnam deliberately, which is to say the film's political heart. Aldrich used a technique splitting the screen into two and four panels to tell the story from several viewpoints at once, not to separate good guys from bad but to show how widely the guilt spread. It was shot in Munich because two thirds of the budget came from West German investors, and it flopped. Who it's for: Admirers of post Vietnam American political thrillers and of formal risk taking. Who it's not for: Not for anyone wanting a lean, tight thriller, since it runs past two and a half hours and is heavily dialogue driven.