After Dark, My Sweet | | Cast : | Jason Patric, Rachel Ward, Bruce Dern | | Director : | James Foley | | Studio : | Artisan Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | August 24, 1990 | | DVD Released Date : | March 26, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 16, 2005 | | Summary | An Excellent Neo-Noir | Content
 | "Whether she was watching me or not, I don't know. I only knew that I was moving again...away from her and Uncle Bud. I felt kinda sad in a way, but at the same time, I felt good."
Kevin Collins (Jason Patric), a basically nice, honest guy who isn't dumb but who doesn't think so fast, should have kept going. But he returns to Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward), a sexy, tired, long-legged woman, and a friend of hers, Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern), a schemer who has been thinking about a way to get some big money for quite a while. All it involves is kidnapping a little boy from a rich family. What Fay and Uncle Bud don't know is that Collie is an ex-boxer who can be set off, and he has walked away from a mental institution.
This is a fine neo-noir based on a story by Jim Thompson, one of the best of the crime pulp writers of the Fifties. Collie is a noir hero moving inevitably toward tragedy. Fay Anderson is close to being a worn-out alcoholic in a big house, hard to trust and hard to believe. She answers questions with more questions. She's as fatalistic in her way as Collie is unpredictable. "I'm glad you came back, Collie," she says. "I wish you hadn't...afraid you wouldn't."
Uncle Bud is anything but fatalistic. He's an untrustworthy schemer who most likely will scam anyone to get what he wants. He can be funny in a sly way, fast with an explanation and a smile. Collie agrees to the plan because of Fay, and when complications arise there's always Uncle Bud to make things seem right. "He let me know that after thinking it over," Collie says, "we should go ahead with everything just as planned. Fay wouldn't be in the car to help with the kid but he was convinced I could handle it on my own. I could see from his point of view how the situation had actually improved. I'd never meant anything to him and now that I didn't mean anything to Fay either and since I'd practically told him how he could fake the whole thing and still cash in, you'd have to be blind not to see what was coming. I was due to get killed and Uncle Bud was due...or thought he was...to be a hero."
And at the end, when people die..."You and me, together forever," Fay says. "You really believed that, Collie. You really believed there could be a you and me." "I know it, Fay."
This is a well-made movie that moves along with the inevitability of great noirs. The three main actors do a fine job of getting across the exhaustion and bleak prospects of the characters they play. The movie made scarcely a ripple when it was released. It deserves far better, and is well worth adding to a person's movie collection. The DVD has no extras. The picture looks just fine. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 22, 2004 | | Summary | Boxer Takes It Out of the Ring! | Content
| 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 | | | Date | August 08, 2004 | | Summary | Jason Patric should be a bigger star | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 14, 2003 | | Summary | Great Movie, Nice DVD | Content
| 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 | | | Date | March 30, 2002 | | Summary | Jason Patric terrific in modern film noir | Content
| 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. |
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