Although Paul Newman was 71 years old in this film, he still could hypnotize the ladies with those famous electric blue eyes. The beneficiary of all those dazzling blue-eyed looks was actress Joanne Woodward (Oscar® for The Three Faces of Eve), his wife of many years. He could have all the beautiful actresses in Hollywood, but as he famously said, ”Why go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?,” a great tribute to Woodward! Nevertheless, Newman retained his universal sex appeal well into old age.

Twilight, this Newman film, is not related to the recent teen films of the same name. Director Robert Benton has taken a familiar theme of LA detectives and gumshoes and given it a polishing, making it an overall enjoyable “who done it?” Released originally in 1998, it is now available on Paramount Home Entertainment video.

Newman tries his best to play an over-the-hill, drunk retired detective, but his movie-star charisma still shines through. The wrinkles and the tanned skin are there, but he doesn’t look like the old bum who lives next door to you who swigs a bottle out of a brown paper bag. Too handsome for that. But he does do a credible job of seeming time-weary and sick of the whole business of what police do day in and day out.

As Harry Ross, he has had the good fortune to live on the posh estate of married movie stars Jack and Catherine Ames, played smoothly by Oscar® winners Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon. Looking nothing like she did in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sarandon has matured into a femme fatale with a taste for too many cigarettes and a little bourbon chaser. A movie star slightly on the skids, you could say.

Harry Ross does little errands once in a while for his friend Jack, who is diagnosed with incurable cancer. Harry once saved Jack’s 17year-old daughter, played by a then bucolic-looking 20year-old Reese Witherspoon, from the clutches of older lecher Jeff (Live Schreiber) down in Mexico. Revealing scenes show Witherspoon completely nude walking around the house like she’s on a Sunday stroll. Shocking!

Jack sends Ross to deliver a package of money to a corrupt gal named Gloria Lamar. One of the most memorable characters in the story, she is played by the superb Margo Martindale (winner of several Emmy Awards). Once a parole officer, she is a morally shady bleached blonde frump who is looking after jailbird Jeff (Schreiber). They are blackmailing the Ames’ for the mysterious death of Catherine’s (Sarandon) first husband 20 years ago. The plot, conjured up by writer Richard Russo and Robert Benton, gets a little convoluted and requires strict attention to what’s going on between the characters.

Ross is reacquainted with an old buddy Raymond, played with charm by James Garner. There’s quite a bit of amusing banter between the two men as they are similar in ages. Raymond has done well for himself and lives in a spectacular cliff-hanging house designed by architect R.M. Schindler in the Hollywood Hills. But is Raymond as nice a guy as he looks?

The Ames’, by the way, also live in an iconic Hollywood house that actually belonged to 1930s movie star Dolores Del Rio and her husband, MGM art director Cedric Gibbons. Done in Art Deco and Streamline style, it is the perfect setting for the home of the two movie stars played by Hackman and Sarandon.

The atmosphere of Twilight is a bit in the style of Raymond Chandler, who wrote some of his detective yarns in the seaside resort of La Jolla, California, and was well known in the Hollywood colony. Even though the film is, more or less, a murder mystery, it boasts plenty of humor and some cleverly funny lines, spoken mostly by Newman and Garner. And what would a Newman film be without a little romance? With his choice of two lovely ladies such as Sarandon and a perky Stockard Channing as a police official, Ross (or Newman as we see him) doesn’t even have to make any effort. We should all be so lucky.

It’s a very enjoyable film.

(Released by Paramount Pictures and rated “R” for violence, language, and some sexuality.)