There's a running gag about the location of Harry's bullet wound, which reduces Newman to being the butt of dick jokes, not funny. But Newman, Sarandon, Hackman, and James Garner, as a jaded dirty-tricks guy, are like cake. Good will flows through them, sure, and they have the ruddy youthful glow of arrogance, but the article is false that holds films like these to be about real human beings. Instead the actors play lifelike wax casts, and even if the roles weren't anemic enough, most of this crowd doesn't have the juice to animate them. Vincent D'Onofrio, ditto.
Twilight feels real, no waxy build-up here.
Although the actors could have phoned in their performances, they did not. In the same way that the fact of Newman added weight and meaning to Nobody's Fool , Twilight lingers because of the ineffability of the main players' distinguished careers. And it's important to recognize that this has everything to do with the cast and nothing to to with the characters as they're written. In the same way that you can close your eyes and imagine a long-ago version of the same film, maybe with Bogie as Harry, William Holden as Jack, and Grace Kelly, you can also grit your teeth and see the parts played by Brad Pitt, Ethan Hawke, and Winona Rider. Nobody goes to a Brad Pitt film in search of superlative acting, and people flocked to Bogart movies to see Bogie being Bogie.