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.

Set in 1981 (the near future for this 1977 release) former US Air Force General Lawrence Dell Burt Lancaster imprisoned for being an outspoken advocate against Vietnam, he is also framed on a manslaughter charge and sent to prison. he escapes with three inmates Paul Winfield, Burt Young, and William Smith and take over a nearby SAC base in Montana, Once in control of the base, and armed with the launch codes, Dell non-negotiable demands from the SAC Command Center that U.S. President (Charles Durning) reveal the truth about the Vietnam War to the American people by reading a National Security document on television. If his demands are not met Dell promises, at the turn of two keys, to send the nine Titan missiles to their targets in the Soviet Union. 'Twilight's Last Gleaming' Directed by Robert Aldrich. Boasts an all star cast, Richard Widmark, Melvyn Douglas, Roscoe Lee Brown. It's a shame that Warner have neglected to release this on DVD. a shame really since many more of Aldrich's films are available.became a vocal advocate of disclosing the truth behind US involvement in Southeast Asia and Indochina in the hope that a post-Watergate America would forgive its Regarded as a dangerous embarrassment by the higher-ups,

I 'm going to counterbalance the previous two reviews. The only reason it's considered "absurdist left-wing" fodder, is that the two reviewers still didn't understand the hatred of that war – of course being divided into this left wing-right wing B.S. wedge that the 2 term administration has firmly slammed into the American Consciousness. The original reviewer doesn't realize that several Vietnam Vets overran the Pentagon, went to Washington D.C. and literally threw their medals. This was a film, that was a catharsis for many overwhelming numbers of PEOPLE THAT ACTUALLY FOUGHT THE WAR experienced.The movie is a cat and mouse thriller with Burt Lancaster demanding attention from the White House by controlling a missle silo/bunker complex. As a former Air Force General with high security clearance, he knows how to complete the mission. The film is a study on why a decorated General threatens to start WW III.On the opposite side of the fence lies the President, played by Charles Durning whose aim is to stop him. The supporting actors are outstanding on all accounts, Richard Widmark, Paul Winfield, Burt Young, Melvin Douglas, to name a few. The actors making up the presidents cabinet are outstanding. The cabinet/advisors must decide- is the General a mad man or can he pull off his threat of missle launch. What is his agenda? The ending is a shocking, uncompromising statement on what happens in a political chess match. The military adviser tells the president, the buck stops here.... you are responsible, even for past transgressions from a previous presidency. I like the fact that a military person says " our way of life can survive the truth."

Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas Charles Durning - among the most memorable actors of the '40s and '50s. I thought it a blessing that they were still in pictures in 1977 and truth to tell, most of the people below 30 in the theatre with me weren't familiar with them. Thematic spoiler ahead: The general run amuck with a noble purpose portrayed by Burt Lancaster wanted the government to reveal the real reason for engaging in the Vietnam War. According to the film the reason was that it was all a game of "chicken" all along. The US war hawks wanted to show the Soviets that America was willing to do anything - including sacrificing the lives of thousands of American soldiers not to mention essentially innocent Vietnamese lives, to stop the spread of communism. The reason seems plausible even now but I think that was not it.Contrary to conventional wisdom, I don't think the Cold War with the Soviets and the accompanying proxy hot wars during that period was about ideology. Just as the earlier two world wars, and practically all wars for that matter, it was a contest for resources. Ho Chi Minh, after all, assiduously courted American support in his guerrilla war against the invading Japanese (he asked for weapons) but was ignored by US officials. He even drafted a constitution for his country blatantly copied from the US constitution. Why was he snubbed by the US officials? Ostensibly,because they didn't want to tick off the French from whom Ho also wanted to free his country. But by that time WWII was already well under way and France had already fallen to Nazi Germany. So it was not as if France was still a valuable ally or could make any demands on the US. I believe the US did not like Ho Chi Minh because, although he was not yet a Soviet or Mao style communist at that time, he was a committed nationalist and socialist. That made him anathema to Wall Street type capitalists or Big Business. In their equation, he was a threat to US interests and with their influence in the military-industrial complex they made him out to be an enemy of the American people. This is the same mind-set that led American operatives to back the strongman Pinochet in Chile which led to the assassination of Allende. This is the same reason why apart from the economic and diplomatic sanctions against the racist former white regime in South Africa, the US ruling classes could not bring themselves to act decisively and directly against the brutalities of the apartheid regime. What really brought down Boer ruled South Africa were not economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation by the West but the active Cuban support of socialist guerrilla movements in countries like Angola and Mozambiqe surrounding South Africa. That put a lot of pressure on the white government whose members realized that they had to capitulate to black rule to firewall the conflagration of popular nationalist revolutions in their region of Africa. Nelson Mandela himself acknowledges this which is why to this day he is in awe of Fidel Castro, who by the way just like Ho was simply a dedicated nationalist out to do the best for his own people thus earning the opprobrium of the Mafia and US Big Business. Just like Ho,the US-educated Castro was initially strongly pro-American. Ho in his struggle against the Japanese and the French had nowhere to turn to but the Russians. Castro, in his struggle against the US banks and the American capitalists who owned and run his country's public utilities and dictated the prices of their chief exports, sugar and tobacco, also had to turn to the Soviets for succor.In any case, this film was great food for thought not only about the inherent dangers of nuclear war readiness but of the politics of fear and the economics of greed.