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In James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet, drawn from Jim Thompson's moody suspense novel, Jason Patric gives a late riff on early Brando. He plays `Kid' Collins, a `retired' boxer who spent some spells in mental institutions after killing an opponent in the ring; now he's frozen into a perpetual fighter's crouch.

Now on the road, he drifts into a bar frequented by Rachel Ward and her unexplained Cornish accent (still a juicer, she's not quite the slatternly shrew of the book). She takes him home and stashes him in a trailer out back among the date palms. Next, up pops `Uncle' Bud (Bruce Dern), who suborns Patric into a half-baked scheme for kidnapping a rich kid. As happens with such schemes, things go awry (the kid turns out to be a diabetic, for one thing), and it falls to Patric to put matters right by a supreme act of self-sacrifice.

But the somnolent pace and elliptical plotting that worked in Thompson's telling sit uncomfortably on the screen. Even in the 1950s, the novel felt that it belonged to the conventions of a decade (or two) earlier – it's a Depression-era, or immediate post-war kind of story. Fast-forwarding it to the 1990s proved more a shock than it could sustain, a disparity exaggerated by misguided fealty to the book.

While there's some fussy updating (the anonymous sticks of Thompson's vision become a faintly upscale desert enclave; an airport replaces the bus terminal), elements that need freshening stick out as anachronisms. For instance, the solicitous attraction felt by the 50-year-old bachelor doctor (George Dickerson) toward Patric can only be homoerotic. While Thompson, chafing under the constraints of his time, left that to be distantly inferred, there's no reason to be coy about it more than 30 years later (there's little coy about the lovemaking between Ward and Patric). To his credit, Dickerson gives the game away with his doomed looks of longing; was it Charles Laughton who remarked `They can't censor the gleam in my eye?' And the long fuse between Ward and Patric sputters on and on; the movie could only be improved by losing half an hour of downing drinks and exchanging alternating glances of hatred and lust.

The best thing about After Dark, My Sweet is Patric's performance, even if, in keeping with the fads of the 1950s, it gives off too many whiffs of `method.' At least he gives the role his best shot. The movie's flaws, however, can't be ascribed to Thompson. Latter-day filmings of his work, like The Grifters of the same year and (especially) The Kill-Off a year before, show there's plenty of punch left in the old pulpmeister.

'Noir' is a film style which is now long gone. There were some good noir films and there were a great many mediocre ones, but that era, and the monochrome (posh word for 'in black and white'). But they were very much of their time, what with the supercool narration, hip dialogue, amoral heroes and generally being downs. The good guys weren't good guys and if they died, well, what did they think they were supposed to do?

At their best they weren't action films but psychological, and although many did have a passable plot, the plot wasn't what you watched them for. You watched them for the double-dealing, the treachery. When the time came for all films to be made in colour (and these days if you want to make a 'monochrome' film, you have to shoot it in colour, then let the lab reduce it to black and white because no one manufactures black and white film stock any more) they seemed to have died a death, which is probably when the mediocre noir films were made.

But writers and directors being a certain breed, they were still attracted to 'noir' in which plot comes second to character and psychology. The rather fanciful term 'neo noir' was coined to somehow contain them, but I for one put the term down more as a pretentious phrase to drop into conversation when you are chatting up a female film buff than anything which means much these days.

After Dark, My Sweet – the title is utterly gratuitous, by the way, and relates to nothing in this film – is, at the very least, a genuine neo noir, despite my misgivings about the phrase. Don't watch it for the plot, watch it for the acting, the interaction between three losers – Jason Patric, always worth the price of admission, Bruce Dern (ditto) and Rachel Ward – and the utterly convoluted, at times quite hard to follow, storyline.

It has its flaws but will keep you watching if this is your bag. It is mine. It would be pointless to outline the plot, as so many do here in IMDb reviews, and all I shall say is that if you reckon this is your bag, you won't be disappointed. Fans of car chases, shoot-outs, violence, neat endings and 'story' would be well advised to look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you fancy an intriguing 'neo noir' give it a whirl. You won't be disappointed. And if you can make head or tail of it, award yourself a brownie point or two. But it ain't half bad, and then some.

It's a shame that this wasn't very good because I really miss film noir and try my best to see as many of the newer Neo-Noirs as possible. The first thing I noticed about this movie was the poor lead performance from Jason Patric. He looks too scruffy to lead a film like this, and his general lack of enthusiasm doesn't do much to get the audience into the film. The rest of the film pretty much falls apart around him, as the characters aren't consistent and the plot isn't very well worked, and never becomes overly exciting. The acting is all rather downbeat and in trying to put in good performances, none of the cast really manage it. The plot follows a retired boxer who has escaped from a loony bin. He stops at a bar for a drink and soon meets a young widow named Fay. She lets him stay on a caravan on her land, and things start looking up for the ex-mental patient. However, things take a turn towards the wrong side of the law when Fay's uncle Bob turns up and convinces the pair to partake in a kidnapping that he's planning. This leaves the scruffy, lunatic, ex-boxing drifter in a sticky situation, as he to decide where his loyalties lie...

I haven't read the book by Jim Thompson upon which this film is based, and given my viewing of this film; I'm not going to bother. After Dark, My Sweet continually tries to instil the same feeling that made the classic noirs of the forties and fifties such a delight, but it always fails as the director has forgotten to give the audience any reason to care for the characters and their plights. Director James Foley also directed the very decent Glengarry Glen Ross, in which he managed to pull very strong performances out of his cast members, which suggests to me that he's a director who needs big stars in order to make his films work. The cinematography is good, but doesn't fit the tone of the film at all. This sort of film got its name for the black and white picture, so it's always going to be difficult to create a noir atmosphere with a crisp and clear colour picture. That being said, the film does look nice and the director captures the locations well. On the whole, I can't recommend this film because it doesn't do what it set out to; but anyone going into the movie expecting only a nineties thriller shouldn't be too disappointed.

It was easy not to notice this in theaters a decade ago, but time has been exceedingly kind to AFTER DARK & likely will continue to be. Already it stands as one of the 90s best films. Though its Southwestern locations (Indio, California was used) are both a bit too sparse and modern to suit the source material, in every other way this captures the ineffable aura of Jim Thompson's prose (and anyone who's actually READ "The Getaway" knows how utterly impossible a task translating his best effects to film really is). Director Foley has done a splendid job in setting a tone of dreamlike, sunburned melancholy and maintaining it throughout, aided immeasurably by fine performances by Rachel Ward & Bruce Dern and an absolutely riveting one by Jason Patric. I had faint hopes for this film before seeing it, due mostly to Patric in the lead; I was floored watching it, and all DUE to Patric's performance. Though a little young for the part, he captures perfectly the likable ambivalence and roiling inner pathology of the Jim Thompson Hero: you never stop feeling for the guy even as you know he will inevitably be compelled by his inner torments to do monstrous things before the story ends. Patric's complete immersion into "Kid Collins" steals a little thunder from one of Bruce Dern's most chillingly indelible portrayals of slime personified, "Uncle Bud". (Fans of Dennis Hopper's "Frank Booth" from BLUE VELVET would take to Uncle Bud immediately, I think.) More than any other film adaptation of Thompson, AFTER DARK -even more than THE GRIFTERS - embodies that peculiar cowtown existentialism of his that tells us we're each of us alone in a world where things start bad and only get worse, pretending we're sane the way kids pretend there's a Santa Claus. A film without an audience in 1990, but little by little, year by year, a growing and appreciative audience is building. See this movie.

THE JIST: See something else.

This film was highly rated by Gene Siskel, but after watching it I can't figure out why. The film is definitely original and different. It even has interesting dialogue at times, some cool moments, and a creepy "noir" feel. But it just isn't entertaining. It also doesn't make a whole lot of sense, in plot but especially in character motivations. I don't know anyone that behaves like these characters do.

This is a difficult movie to take on -- I suggest you don't accept the challenge.

Intense actors like Bruce Dern, Jason Patrick and Rachel Ward combine to make this modern-day film noir a winner. Of the three, I don't know who was most interesting as all offer good performances and intriguing characters.

Patric does the narration in this noir, playing an ex-boxer and mental patient. Wow, that alone makes for an interesting guy! He looks dumb, but he isn't. Ward is the slinky, attractive, cynical, intelligent and compassionate co- conspirator of a kidnapping plan that goes bad. Bruce Dern also is in the mix and Dern never fails to fascinate in about any film.

The movie could be considered kind of downer to the average viewer, but I found it fascinating....and I don't like depressing movies normally. What I found was a kind of quirky crime film. Take a look and see if you agree. This is pretty unknown film that shouldn't have that status because it's simply a good story and well-done.

Three losers, a dirty ex-cop (Bruce Dern), an alcoholic seductress (Rachel Ward), and a punchy boxer (Jason Patric) become entwined in a botched kidnapping caper. Believe no one, trust no one, especially your partners in the crime. The story unfolds entirely from the viewpoint of the three kidnappers. "After Dark My Sweet" is slow, but never boring or predictable. I can't say I was totally satisfied with the outcome, and some plot threads dangle uncomfortably. Nevertheless, a better than average noir film, with competent character development and acting, nice photography, and interesting musical score. Marginally recommended. - MERK

The first of two Jim Thompson adaptations released in 1990 (the other being the more well-known GRIFTERS), AFTER DARK has all of Thompson's hallmarks: dangerous women, the confidence game, and characters that are either not as dim as others suspect them of being, or not as harmless.

Jason Patric is superb as a former boxer disqualified from the sport for life due to an incident in the ring (director James Foley uses RAGING BULL-esquire sequences to flesh out the back story) and the too-little-seen Rachel Ward also delivers a great performance. But Bruce Dern is the film's secret weapon: his sweet-talking grifter Uncle Bud subtly commands each of his scenes.

there's almost no comic relief in this film, so watch it prepared to be sucked into the void.

If in the 90's you're adapting a book written in the 50's, set the bloody thing in the 50's and not the '90's. See, 40 year old mores and values tend not to play as well, or ring as true, that far down the road. It's a simple rule that Hollywood habitually keeps violating. And that's the problem with this film. It should have been set in the era it was written in. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, but nooo. I'd elaborate, but bmacv's comment spells it out quite well. I'll limit my commentary to Rachel Ward. She looks like she dieted her ass completely out of existence for this role. As a result, she looks like a crack ho' on chemotherapy, and is about as sexy as a gay leather couch in drag. I found her "I could die at any moment" look quite disconcerting, and it greatly detracted from her supposed "hotness" and the "sexual tension" the film intended to create. Other than that, the film was quite good; a 7+ out of 10.

I read some gushing reviews here on IMDb and thought I would give this movie a look. Disappointed. On the plus side the male leads are good, and some interesting photography but as a whole this movie fails to convince. Seems to be full of its' own self indulgent importance in trying to say something meaningful but falls way short and all in all the picture is an unconvincing mess.

It is one of those films classified as a film noir which can be defined as follows:

"A film noir is marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, menace and cynical characters".

Well that is the story here: 3 losers stumble upon each other with their collective problems that include mental illness, alcoholism, laziness, indebtedness etc and together they conspire to kidnap a child and outwit each other.

Would have been a much better movie if the story was confined more to the kidnap instead of the character failings of the kidnappers. I thought the female lead was way out of her depth and came across as an amateur actress.

Whilst some good moments, I finished up feeling I had wasted my time.

4/10.

If you're as huge of a fan of an author as I am of Jim Thompson, it can be pretty dodgy when their works are converted to film. This is not the case with Scott Foley's rendition of AFTER DARK MY SWEET. A suspenseful, sexually charged noir classic that closely follows and does great justice to the original text. Jason Patrick and Rachel Ward give possibly the best performances of their careers. And the always phenomenal Bruce Dern might have even toped him self with this one. Like Thompson's book this movie creates a dark and surreal world where passion overcomes logic and the double cross is never far at hand. A must see for all fans of great noir film. ****!!!

An ex-boxer drifts into a town and becomes involved with a rich widow and her shady friend. It moves very slowly, which is fine if the characters are interesting or the plot is compelling, but that's not the case here. The characters are very poorly developed and the plot wanders aimlessly, making for a rather dull movie. Patric's performance is somewhat one-note, with that one note being a smoldering look. The whole psychological mumbo-jumbo regarding his mental state is not the least bit interesting. Ward lacks the allure required for her role. Dern does what he can with a sketchily drawn character. The direction is journeyman at best.

Ex-boxer turned drifter, Kid Collins (Patric), wafts his way into the life of a con-man and a drunk. Wanting to stay below the radar, Collins takes refuge with a woman that trades shelter for work. The death of her husband has plummeted her into a world of alcohol and rage. As Collins begins to build a relationship with her, she shares with him details of a kidnapping plan that her and her 'Uncle' have been working on. Thinking that Collins is nothing more than a mental lackey, they persuade him to help with the diabolical plan. Little do they know that the monsters struggling inside Collins' mind are about to be unleashed onto the world. As the plan begins to disintegrate before their eyes, loyalties are lost, and nobody can be trusted.

What an amazing find! When I began watching this film I was not expecting to be so surprised. Jason Patric is spectacular in this film and demonstrates powerfully his ability to control and maintain a troubled character. I never once felt that he had stepped out of character during this performance. This is due in part to the exceptional direction by James Foley that creates a story so imaginative and real that you begin to feel as if this could be a town next to yours. Foley gives us flawed characters that take away that image of perfection and helps build deeper emotional ties. Foley also never gives anything away. Throughout this entire film, I never knew what was going to happen next. This is surprising for a Hollywood notorious for 'jumping the gun'.

Patric's performance with Foley's direction coupled with a completely terrifying secondary characters (like Bruce Dern and Rachel Ward), After Dark My Sweet is a true diamond in the rough.

Grade: ***** out of *****

Ever read Jim Thompson? He's hard-boiled noir with the most extreme fatalism and misanthropy I've ever encountered. There are rarely private detectives in his work - just losers, psychotics and small-time con artists. This film has Thompson nailed - "If God made any real mistakes in this world, it was in giving us a will to live when we've got no excuse for it." Every character in the film balances on a razor's edge between surreal and creepy realism. There's sleazy, conniving Uncle Bud, played by Bruce Dern and spookily well-intentioned Doc Goldman played by George Dickerson. Jason Patric gives a wonderful, often heart-wrenching performance as Kid Collins, a none-too-bright, shy ex-fighter who's more scared of himself than of anyone else. Rachel Ward is Fay, the sexy femme fatale who we can't quite figure out...It's not your standard film noir, nor is it intended to be. After Dark My Sweet, along with The Grifters, are two excellent adaptations of novels by one of my favorite writers, Jim Thompson.

This had high intellectual pretensions.The main lead intends to give a "deep" "meaningful" rendering(with voice over for his frames of mind naturally) and he was certainly influenced by the fifties/sixties "method " -which,when the script and the direction were worthwhile did give stunning results (see Clift,Newman,Winters).But here the story is abysmal.Besides it moves too slow,you could edit at least 20 minutes -including pointless flashbacks-and the plot line would not be changed .At times ,it's very doubtful that Bruce Dern believes in his "Uncle "character and his portraying often verges on parody.An interesting side is only skimmed over:the relationship young boy/hero -if we admit that the hero is himself some kind of child- When he says to the young kid that he would let nobody do harm to him,some welcome tenderness emerges.But it's botched and only the final scene returns to it.

Word to the wise:Take Foley's "at close range" instead:it has two great actors (Christopher Walken and Sean Penn together!),it's also an offbeat movie ,but it's gripping,suspenseful.Here my hitchcockometer points sullenly towards zero throughout.

Never mind the retro '40s pulp fiction title: this oddly haphazard adaptation of yet another Jim Thompson crime potboiler is Film Noir without the noir. There aren't any shadows in the Southern California desert setting, or in any of the (count 'em) three principal characters, least of all the ersatz anti-hero: a punch drunk ex-fighter (Jason Patric) with an unfocused but attractive 50 yard stare and a bruised attitude not unlike young Marlon Brando's circa 'On The Waterfront'. After drifting into suburban Palm Springs he becomes the pawn in a kidnap scheme which, naturally, goes wrong, but how or why and with what consequences is never really clear: the motivations in the final scenes are muddled, to say the least. Patric does his best to give the role an appropriate smoldering intensity, but for all his posturing it's obvious he's a white-hatted good guy from the concern he shows for the diabetic young kidnap victim. Elsewhere Bruce Dern projects his trademark sleazy congeniality, and Rachel Ward is totally miscast as a dangerous Femme-Fatale: it's unlikely she could drive a man around the corner of lukewarm distraction, much less over the edge of sexual obsession.

While watching the exquisitely photographed film After Dark, My Sweet, one has to admire Jason Patrick's heartbroken voiceover. His narration is a combination of punch-drunkenness, paranoia, and a surrendering to fate. Like in many noirs, Collie knows there is no way to escape one's destiny; the only thing to do is ride it out and see what happens.

After Dark, My Sweet is one of those little gems, a film that came out just as independent cinema was experiencing an upswing in popularity. And, although the film was no huge hit when it was released, After Dark, My Sweet was at the beginning of a new trend: the neo-noir film. John Diehl would later impress us with Last Seduction and Red Rock West, but while those noirs had the style of the older genre, After Dark...has the dialogue and attitude of old; the words coming out of Patrick's mouth are clearly classic Jim Thompson. That sort of dementia, a kind of poetry, is hard to fake. James Foley has translated the novel to screen without losing the feel. When Collie is flashing-back to his boxing days, our heart races with him. When Collie recalls all of his past regrets and his own self-loathing, the sound of his voice and the words he is speaking are haunting and haunted. Jason Patric's performance is his best; he is pathetic yet endearing, stupid but savvy. A tough role to pull off, but he does it in true shaggy-dog ease. Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern(always the crazy one) play good backup, especially Ward with her 1940's-era fast-speak witty banter, straight out of Barbara Stanwick movies. But, this is Patrick's (and Thompson's) show.

Bravo to James Foley for this top-notch adaption of Jim Thompson's nightmarish reality, one that is desperate and life-threatening and sometimes all too real.

After Dark, My Sweet is a film with a classic noir set-up: a desperate man teams up with a violent drifter and an alcoholic widow to kidnap a rich child. Director James Foley takes this plot and makes the best film that could possibly have been made with an already good premise. It helps that this is based on a short novel by Jim Thompson, a writer whose pulpy crime plots-which focus more on twisted characters than plot details-seem to work especially well on the screen.

The main character here is ex-boxer Kid Collins, a drifter who is troubled by an incident from his past. He's so troubled that he seems strange to everyone he encounters; this inspires extreme reactions so that people he has just met are equally as likely to try physical violence on him as they are to try to take him home. His skewed perspective is especially well represented by scenes that suddenly end with jarring transitions that seem to strike like lightning. Troubled as he is, he usually seems to have the best interests of others at heart. Given a chance to escape the plot he's about to be pulled into, he refuses it because he sees a chance for a real connection with the widow.

So, this film has all the best elements of noir: a troubled anti-hero, a desperate criminal plot, and a sense of weary inevitability in the way the plot unfolds. The visuals, editing, direction, and acting are all top notch and this has one of those great endings that gives the viewer a new way to look at everything that has happened before. This compares well with the best noir and neo-noir films ever made; in fact, I'm shocked by its obscurity.

A masterpiece on all levels, with a constant undercurrent of high-voltage electricity charging every moment. A spectacularly beautiful movie.

From Wikipedia entry; I cannot put it any better:

Roger Ebert in his Great films review of the movie wrote "After Dark, My Sweet is the movie that eluded audiences; it grossed less than $3 million, has been almost forgotten, and remains one of the purest and most uncompromising of modern film noir. It captures above all the lonely, exhausted lives of its characters." Writer David M. Meyers praised the script "The screenplay, which hews closely to Jim Thompson's heartless novel, is unusually tight, spare, and well constructed."

I saw this film during the 1990's and I was really disappointed. It seemed to go on forever and the main storyline, about the kidnapping, was just a backdrop for dull characters who never stop talking and their boring, ill-chosen lives. It has to do with an washed-up ex-boxer who escapes form a mental hospital and drifts into a kidnapping plot for quick cash which goes awry. After that happens, we wait for something interesting to happen. Very little does and nearly all of it is dull. The action is virtually non-existent and the murders are devoid of suspense. The film began well enough and the locations are very well chosen and photographed. But very little was done with them. The acting is passable, but that's all. I have no desire to see this movie again.

There are certainly challenges in adapting a 50's pulp novel and bringing it up to date, but James Foley handled it well. The key is to simply ignore all of the things that have changed, except for the things that are too glaring to be ignored. Luckily the basic themes of Thompsons stories are timeless. Greed, lust, and deception don't change much over the years. I particularly appreciate that they left Collins' character alone, because his simple mindedness is what made the character great. The only real problems with the film come with the low budget. Cheesy music and empty boxing arenas are a dead giveaway, but the low budget also helped. The movie feels stark, barren, empty, just like the characters. I really enjoyed it.