Harry Ross (Twilight)

Created by Robert Benton and Richard Russo

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Retired, and just plain tired, Hollywood gumshoe HARRY ROSS takes odd jobs (and once, a bullet, trying to rescue their jailbait daughter) for his old pal and dying movie star, Jack Ames, and his one-time sexpot actress wife, Catherine. He bides his time, when he’s not being shot, with former cop Raymond Hope, who also occasionally does some work for the Ames.

Then Harry is asked to do a special little favor for them, and ends up immersed in a web of blackmail, murder, sexuality and moral excess. As the film’s tagline goes, “Some people can buy their way out of anything. Except the past.”

The film’s a fine character study already, evocative of such Chandler classic as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, but it’s comes jam-packed with rock-solid performances by some certified private eye vets. Then 73-year-old Paul Newman (Harper, The Drowning Pool) starred as Harry, James Garner (Marlowe, The Rockford Files) as Raymond Hope, an ex-cop turned studio fixer, and Gene Hackman (Night Moves, The Conversation) as Jack Ames. Even writer/director Robert Benton’s had memorably travelled this turf before, with 1977’s excellent The Late Show.

“Richard (Russo, his co-writer) told me he wanted to do a private eye movie,” says Benton, in some pre-release publicity. “In fact, I had shot a movie here about twenty years ago called The Late Show with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin and it had been a particularly enjoyable experience for me. We knew right away we wanted to write for Paul.”

It seems Benton continues to be fascinated by detective stories. “The private eye is kind of a romantic urban hero. He is caught between cynicism and idealism and by tradition, he’s a complicated figure and that has always interested me… it seems to me the private eye form offers you such a wide spectrum of society, from the very wealthy to the sleaziest low-rent characters you can find. And those are always interesting characters to write about,” says Benton.

“The real story of the movie is the unraveling of people’s lives… how rich and complicated life gets. It’s so beautiful here (in Los Angeles) and these are very extraordinary, beautiful people. Their sense of privilege, beauty, wealth and intelligence is such a part of their lives that they take it for granted. It’s a gift given to them…it’s become like breathing for them. It must be deeply agonizing when you come to the end of the run after things have always gone right for you,” notes Benton. “Within this movie there are all kinds of layers of love stories and things that happen in a mystery. And I think the mystery unfolds out of character in this, not from a set of traditional clues,” he adds.

With all that talent involved, how unwatchable could it be? Despite its lukewarm reception by audiences, it’s one of the most satisfying P.I. movies of the nineties and one of my favourites–a compelling slow burn treat that aims far higher than the usual kiss-kiss bang-bang of most P.I. flicks of its era.

In fact, I think this under-rated and neglected gem is the long-lost lost third Lew Archer film, the natural conclusion to a trilogy Newman began decades earlier with Harper and The Drowning Pool. Once again, Ol’ Blue Eyes is essentially Archer travelling under an assumed name (could it be that the hero’s surname is a tip of the fedora to Archer’s creator, Ross Macdonald?), and once again he’s digging up long-buried family dirt, but this time, it’s hitting a lot closer to home, in a scenario that at times recalls Macdonald at his very best. Recommended.

Highly.

UNDER OATH

• “Twilight’s an underrated exercise in geezer noir. It has one of cinema’s funniest hard boiled exchanges between two characters (Paul Newman and James Garner) right before all hell breaks lose in the climatic gunfight.”
  — Terrill Lankford
• “… a dazzlingly smart script by Benton and co-writer Richard Russo… as close to a perfect film as I’ve seen in a long while.”
  — Barbara Shulgasser (The San Francisco Examiner)

FILMS

• TWILIGHT | Buy this video | Buy this DVD  | Watch it now!
  (1998, Paramount)
  Working Title: “The Magic Hour”
  Screenplay by Robert Benton and Richard Russo
  Directed by Robert Benton
  Produced by Arlene Donovan and Scott Rudin
  Executive producer: Michael Hausman
  A Cinehaus Production
  Starring Paul Newman as HARRY ROSS
  with James Garner as Raymond Hope
  Also starring Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon, Giancarlo Esposito

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Paul Newman’s Reflection On Noir: The 25Th Anniversary Of Twilight
  Glen Erick Hamilton pays tribute to “a brilliant but neglected capper to generations of detective cinema.”
  

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.