A great late career film from Robert Aldrich. Three convicts escape from a military prison and commandeer a nuclear missile silo in Montana, holding the US hostage until it exposes the country's true motives for its involvement in Vietnam. Aldrich, one of Hollywood's great liberals lays an anti-government stance on pretty thick while making a tense, highly enjoyable thriller. Burt Lancaster, as a general railroaded by the government on a murder-one rap, is the head con with Paul Winfield and Burt Young joining him as ne'er do wells with very short fuses. Charles Durning is a rather too good to be true President and his cabinet is populated by the likes of Joseph Cotten, William Marshall and Melvyn Douglas. They don't really have much to do (or say). The focus of the film lies in the test of wills between Lancaster and military goon Richard Widmark. It's a taut, highly suspenseful film despite Aldrich's inflammatory preaching. Lancaster is dynamite as a self righteous career soldier, disillusioned with his own government and demanding that it come clean. Winfield & Young offer great support and William Smith appears briefly as one of Lancaster's unlucky cohorts. Set in the US but filmed in Germany. Gerald S. O'Laughlin, Richard Jaeckel and Charles McGraw are in it too. The rousing score is by Jerry Goldsmith.
Review of Twilight's Last Gleaming
