By R.S.

Bomb Bursting

TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

Directed by ROBERT ALDRICH Screenplay by RONALD M. COHEN and EDWARD HUEBSCH

If your yearning for the good old anxieties of yesteryear--that is, the late '50s and early '60s--is simply uncontrollable, you could do worse than spend a couple of hours with Twilight's Last Gleaming. In it, a gang of desperate men seize a SAC missile silo in the Far West and threaten to unleash its contents on Russian targets, thus precipitating World War III, unless the President of the U.S. accedes to their demands.

Instantly one is reminded of Fail Safe, Seven Days in May and various other pop-cult expressions of former doomsday fears. This sense of deja vu is enhanced by the casting of that archetypal movie star of the '50s, Burt Lancaster, as the leading trespasser on Government property. His SAC nemesis is Richard Widmark, still energizing his performances with a subtle suggestion of psychopathy. Playing the President's closest advisers are such good, gray actors as Melvyn Douglas, Joseph Gotten and Leif Erickson. It is all rather comforting to see these old companions in adventure from bygone matinees. Director Aldrich, a veteran purveyor of thrills in all the low-caste genres, knows how to work this territory, nipping lightly on the nerve endings in the early going, then settling down for a protracted gnaw at them as the clocks tick toward the deadline set by the blackmailers.

Then the whole enterprise unravels, mostly because of an ill-considered at tempt to make a statement about contemporary issues. Lancaster is a cashiered Air Force general, unhinged by his experiences as a P.O.W. in Viet Nam.

What he wants the people in Washington to do is to release classified docu ments, which "prove" that the war was needlessly prolonged in order to lend "credibility" to U.S. protestations of cold war military toughness.

This is not exactly news. At this late date, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who is unaware of that accusation. Yet the movie assumes that a President (nicely played by Charles Durning as an ordinary man growing under pressure) would be shocked speechless by this revelation and his advisers would conspire to have him assainated rather than let him acknowledge something everyone knows. There is all kind of talk about the country's not being able to stand the shock, but the script insists on quoting some of the infamous documents that are preying on Lancaster's mind. There is nothing in them worth picking up a picket sign to protest, let alone knocking over a missile base. In short, the movie's not in considerable possibilities for innocent entertainment are undercut by the feckless desire of small minds to make a big statement. R.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.