Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Still thinking about the gigantic reach of Gene Hackman's career, which has led me to look back at past reviews. Side-stepping more obvious choices such as Mississippi Burning and Hoosiers, I am opting for two reviews that originally ran in The Herald, from films containing tip-top Hackman work, even if he is not the top-lined star. I understand The Replacements (2000) has something like a quiet cult following; not so Twilight (from 1998, not the vampire circus), although that very modest film creates a nice mood. Also, I get to mention Chuck Knox.
Twilight
The last time Paul Newman and director Robert Benton got together, the happy result was Nobody’s Fool, simply one of the best American movies of the decade.
Their new collaboration, Twilight, doesn’t hit those lovely highs. But it’s a distinct pleasure, especially in days when movies seem to pride themselves on how fast, loud, and violent they can be.
Twilight dips into the traditional private-eye genre, specifically the southern California slant of authors such as Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. The movie seems to take place in that rosy “magic hour” just before sunset, when L.A.’s palm trees and neon signs fall into definition.
The private eye is Harry Ross (Newman), a former cop. Harry’s been through a lot: alcoholism, retirement, loneliness. Right now he’s living in the guest room of a fancy Hollywood mansion; he retrieved the runaway daughter (Reese Witherspoon) of the owners, and they’re still grateful to him.
In fact, they’re friends—but with some tension involved. Harry plays cards with Jack (Gene Hackman), a wealthy and now-ailing movie veteran, and he’s clearly infatuated with Jack’s wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon), a former actress. Catherine knows it, too.
In the film’s relaxed style, a blackmail scheme begins to emerge. Jack asks Harry to deal with it, and Harry stumbles over one dead body, a couple of greedy lowlifes (Margo Martindale and Liev Schreiber), and a wannabe detective (Giancarlo Esposito). We also meet characters from Harry’s life as a cop, including a former flame (Stockard Channing, in great form) and a fellow old-time flatfoot (James Garner). Garner does seamless work as Harry’s roguish old friend, who lives in a spectacular fifties-era house that seems to be perched in the trees above Hollywood.
In fact, the locations are a big part of the story, like exact visualizations of those evocative Raymond Chandler novels. These buildings, as well as simple scenes of intimate conversation, are photographed with a razor-sharp eye by cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski. (There’s a joke going around Hollywood that a cinematographer can’t get hired unless he speaks Polish—this movie will show you why.)
Because Benton, who wrote the script with his Nobody’s Fool writer Richard Russo, has such a keen ear for simple dialogue, the movie’s also a pleasure to listen to. There’s a grown-up sense of cool about the film, as though the problems of the plot were not as important as the way people treat each other.
On a recent publicity trip to our area, Robert Benton told me he was less concerned with complicating the storyline than with studying the relationships between the characters. That’s probably why the people in Twilight seem to have real histories, with good and bad qualities fighting for dominance in each person.
It’s probably also why the story isn’t fully engaging. So mild is the action that we barely get into the mystery before it is solved. There isn’t quite enough plot to hang the relationships on. But Newman, the smooth septuagenarian, is wonderful to watch: cagey, jaded, just a bit angst-ridden. When he sits down with Garner over styrofoam coffee cups in a police station hallway, it’s a classic scene of two old-timers trading tales, like cowboys at a saloon.
A few more scenes for Hackman might have fleshed out his role, and although Newman and Sarandon have chemistry, she doesn’t fully nail her part—some level of danger isn’t there. But the strengths of this movie outweigh its weaknesses by a long shot, and most of Twilight creates a pleasing glow.
The Replacements
Certain movies, while not aiming for greatness, nevertheless manage to qualify as perfectly fine fare for a Friday night in August. Case in point: The Replacements, an ingratiating if unremarkable football comedy. This summer date movie has some hard-hitting action, laid-back romance, breezy comedy, and a bona fide Hollywood hunk. Order the popcorn, and you’re set.
The movie is obviously inspired by the 1987 pro football strike, in which the regular NFL players sat out while dozens of “replacement” players grabbed their moment in the spotlight.
That 1987 incident may yet be a good subject for a movie (Seahawk fans may recall that coach Chuck Knox was especially inspired during the period of replacements), but this one is set in the present day.
The Replacements looks at a fictional football team called the Washington Sentinels. As the strike looms, the team owner (Jack Warden) hires a new coach (Gene Hackman) to recruit a gang of replacements.
Hackman, who plays a football coach the way Joe Montana throws tight spirals, quickly puts the word out. His new team is a collection of cast-offs and oddballs, including a Welsh soccer player and a Japanese sumo wrestler. The keystone to the squad is a former college phenom quarterback who never caught on in the pros. He’s played by Keanu Reeves.
Keanu Reeves as a football player? This is the movie’s largest suspension of disbelief, and you either swallow it or not.
As he does in his action roles, Reeves tries to approximate the vocal register of James Earl Jones. But at least this effort distracts us from the dubiousness of his ability to throw the football more than twenty yards.
Reeves romances the head cheerleader (Brooke Langton, of Swingers) of the Sentinels, who enlists the rest of her squad from a local strip club.
Director Howard Deutch, who cut his teeth on a pair of pleasant John Hughes productions (Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful), cast the film well. Rhys Ifans, who played Hugh Grant’s smelly housemate in Notting Hill, gets his share of laughs as the Welsh placekicker.
Jon Favreau is fittingly crazed as a Dick Butkus-like defensive headhunter, Orlando Jones is buggy as a speedster who can’t really hang onto the ball, and Hawaiian-born Ace Yonamine is, well, gigantic as the sumo wrestler.
Also hanging around are John Madden and Pat Summerall, doing their play-by-play patter. They also do commentary over one of the film’s nicest scenes, when Reeves puts the moves on Langton after closing time in the bar she owns.
One dishonest ploy taints the film’s generally innocent tone. The replacement players are scabs, but the movie gets around this uncomfortable reality by making the regular players into preening, selfish, overpaid ingrates. Granted, many NFL players may be preening, selfish, etc. But this is too convenient, making it easy to root for the strike-breaking players.
Of course the movie isn’t aimed at union workers, but at 19-year-olds looking for something to do before school starts. On that score, the movie splits the uprights.
March 7, 2025
