Richard Russo Critical Essay | Critical Review by Stanley Kauffmann

Critical Review by Stanley Kauffmann

SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Love Later On.” New Republic 218, no. 13 (30 March 1998): 26-7.

In the following excerpt, Kauffmann argues that Twilight is an ineffective attempt to counter youth-driven Hollywood movies, characterizing Robert Benton and Russo's dialogue as “laboriously smart.”

Twilight (Paramount) is indeed crepuscular. Robert Benton, who directed and cowrote it (with Richard Russo), clearly wanted to strike a blow for his film generation in this era of teenage pleasurings. So he devised a film to star Paul Newman and Gene Hackman and James Garner and (much younger but still not young) Susan Sarandon. In 1977, Benton did The Late Show, with Art Carney as an aging private eye who gets in trouble. This time Newman is the private eye, retired, who gets in trouble.

After a brief prologue in Mexico, the film takes place in Hollywood and environs. The chief setting is the mansion of Hackman, a...
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