After Dark, My Sweet

Rating:
Summary: Brooding Noir at Its Best
Review: After Dark, My Sweet Brooding Noir at Its Best

Reviewed by Bruce Cantwell (a-movie-to-see.com)

Kevin Collins (Jason Patric) is a shabby, seemingly slowwitted drifter who stumbles upon sultry, cynical Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward), a regular at Bert's (Rocky Giordani) bar.

He tries to strike up a conversation about his mythical traveling partner Jack Billingsley but Bert wants none of it. Collins doesn't want to start trouble, but he doesn't take kindly to getting booted out of a bar for no good reason, so when Bert threatens to get physical, Collins puts him away with a sharp blow to the face.

As Collins walks up the road, a car pulls up beside him. Fay likes the way he handles himself. She wants to take him home.

The best thing about James Foley's adaptation of the hard-boiled Jim Thompson novel After Dark, My Sweet is its laser-like focus on this fatal attraction.

From the way Collins looks at Fay when she walks into the bar, we know that they're going to become involved, and from the tone of the film, we sense that nothing good is going to come from it.

For all of its inevitability, we're never quite sure exactly what is going to go terribly wrong.

The film is remarkably sparse. Apart from Collins and Fay, there are only two characters who have more than a handful of lines, Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern), the ex-police detective on the make and Doc Goldman (George Dickerson) the compassionate homosexual friend. The setting, dusty dry and bleak.

With all of its detailed observation and deliberate pacing, there isn't a wasted moment in the inexorable march toward tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Boxer Takes It Out of the Ring!
Review: 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 *****

Rating:
Summary: Good adaptation of an excellent book.
Review: Foley's adaptation of Thompson's classic is one the best adaptations of the late great writers books out of Hollywood (and much better than any of the ones from France).

It's faithful to the book and not an especially creative adaptaion. It greatest strenght come from the original. Jason Patric and Bruce Dern put on excellent performaces. The movie also features one of the most stagely filmed sex scenes I've even seen in a mainstream flick.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Nice DVD
Review: Great neo-noir set in rural California. I saw this movie in the theater with about 5 other people. Most of you missed it then, don't miss it now. After Dark, My Sweet is great on all counts. The acting, plot, script -- all are superb.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Nice DVD
Review: I saw this movie in the theatre with about 5 other people. Most of you missed it then, don't miss it now. After Dark, My Sweet is great on all counts. The acting, plot, script -- all are superb.

Rating:
Summary: Jason Patric terrific in modern film noir
Review: it seems like you don't see too much of Jason Patric in movies, which is a shame because he is one fine actor. [Another little- seem indie film he's wonderful in is 'Incognoto']. He takes 'After Dark, my Sweet' from just another movie about down and dirty people doing down and dirty things to something more meaningful and artistically satisfying.

This is a dark, dark tale about a once promising boxer [Patric] who has become an aimless drifter. He's one of those lost souls that no one on earth cares about. In the California desert,he drifts into the life of a sad, boozy widow [Rachel Ward]. He begins to feel that someone might actually need him, but it turns out that she and a friend named Uncle Bud [Bruce Dern] are up to no good. It starts to look like the boxer is just someone they can use in a criminal plan they have cooked up. Maybe. Maybe not. No one here is what they appear to be.

I thought the film was very well constructed, with all the elements gradually building up to the ominous [and inevitable] conclusion. Others, however, will find it to be too slow. This is an old-school thriller with more emphasis on studying the characters than on the actions of the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Will Grow In Stature Over Time
Review: 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, 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.

Rating:
Summary: Will Grow In Stature Over Time
Review: 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, 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.

Rating:
Summary: Film noir at its finest.
Review: Jason Patrick is great. The movie catches the real flavor of a Jim Thompson novel. Highly recommended. Probably the best movie made from a Thompson novel yet.

Rating:
Summary: Jason Patric should be a bigger star
Review: Jim Thompson is one of the great pulp crime novelists of our time, and the film adaptations of his works are usually, but not always, quite splendid. This film, starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern, is an underrated gem that's worth a look. The look and feel of this movie is slightly like a David Lynch flick, in that it's a modern update of Thompson's work, most of which was written in the 40s and 50s, but it has a timeless retro feel, with certain elements that span so many different eras that you can't quite place what year the film takes place. This flick stars Jason Patric as 'Kid' Collins, a former boxer who kills a guy in the ring and goes on the lam between periodic stays at mental institutions. He ends up meeting Fay (Ward), a widow who takes a liking to him, and Uncle Buck (Dern) a sleazy con man with various crooked connections in many low places. Patric is particularly outstanding. He plays a scruffy, down on his luck drifter who's lost all hope and hardly even cares about much more than finding a place to sleep and eat for the night. The Southwestern U.S. desert landscape lends itself well to films that convey a sense of isolation and loneliness and Patric embodies it here perfectly. The guy is really good at playing dark troubled characters. And Bruce Dern is right up there with Dennis Hopper when it comes to playing sleazeballs. Uncle Buck hatches a scheme to kidnap a rich kid and tries to use Patric to help unfurl the scheme. If I told you anymore, it would ruin all the twists and turns that this film takes. The movie stays pretty faithful to Thompson's novel, which is a good thing beacuse whenever a director strays from Thompson's original work (like Peckinpah in 'The Getaway' or the film version of 'The Killer Inside Me' starring Stacy Keach) they usually miss the mark, Thompson is so good at developing character that there's no real need to tamper with it. There's so many great little scenarios in the movie and they all contribute to to the story's grittiness. It's actually quite a quiet film, with a number of scenes played out in muted tones or silence, suggesting a disconnection from the outside world. The film would probably be best described as melancholic, especially whne Patric starts to fall for the film's femme fatale, because you just KNOW that it's doomed before it's even began. You try and stay unmoved when Patric breaks down and cries during the scene when he realizes Fay has left him. Unfortunately, it's tough to talk about this film without giving too much away. If you're a fan of understated, intelligent, well-paced little films, then this should be right up your alley.