After Dark, My Sweet (1990)

Captivating movie !

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Escaped mental patient and ex-boxer (Jason Patric) gets involved with a widow (Rachel Ward) and her "uncle" (Bruce Dern). There's something equally amusing and insulting with a film like this. A pretentious neo-noir film that has "wannabe" written all over it. I don't have much of an opinion about neo-noir in general. There's something inherently phony about it. Like the players involved are all trying so hard to emulate something they have nothing more than an academic understanding of.Anyway, it's a stinker. The acting sucks by everybody, although Dern equates himself best. Perhaps it's because I'm used to eccentric performances with him. Patric acts like he's playing Lennie in "Of Mice and Men." Ward vamps it up but she's no femme fatale. Just another wannabe in a movie full of them.

This film is in the Film Noir Encyclopedia under neo-noir, but all of the other films I've seen so far in that category are much better than this one. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the original material or the screenplay or the director or the actor Jason Patric, but the lead character is not at all engaging and his apparent mental problem that disappears partway through is confusing. The femme fatale was interesting in the beginning as she was spinning her web, but then she got soft and mushy and the inconsistency was a let-down. The ending is the only good thing about the film. The ending explains why the Jason Patric character has been acting so strangely but the last 5 minutes could not change my opinion that the film is a waste of time. There are so many better films to see...

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.

After Dark, My Sweet is a great, modern noir, filled with seedy characters, dirt roads, and, of course, sweaty characters. It seems that most of the truly great noirs of the last two or three decades have taken place in the South, where the men glisten and the ladies, um, glisten too. Why? Because it's hooooottttttttttt. And because everyone looks better wet (at least the men do - sweaty women leave me clammy). Anyway - there might be some spoilers in here. This film is a wonderful example of everything a noir should be - steady pacing (though some with attention disorders refer to it as 'slow'), clearly and broadly drawn (though not simple) characters, and tons of atmosphere. Noir, if anything, is about moods and attitudes. That's why the great ones are not marked by your traditional definitions of 'great' acting (look at Bogart, Mitchum, Hurt, and Nicholson - they (and their characters) were anything but real - but they had style and sass and in a crime movie that's exactly what you want). or quickly paced adventures (again all great noirs seem to be on slow burn like a cigarette). Great noirs create an environment and you just inhabit it with the characters for a couple hours. After Dark My Sweet let's you do that - and it let's you enjoy the company of some very interesting and complex characters. Uncle Bud and Collie are intriguing - never allowing the audience to know what really makes them tick - and Patric and Dern (I love Bruce Dern, by the way) are pitch perfect, Dern especially (see previous comment). They take the basic outlines of a character and give them depth and elicit our sympathies. The story itself is also interesting. There're better plots in the world of noir (hardly any mystery here - mostly it's suspense), but this one is solid. If anything, the simply 'okay' plot has more to do with Jim Thompson's writing than anything else. With Thompson, plots are almost secondary; he eschewed the labyrinthine tales of Hammett and Chandler for simpler stories with stronger, more confusing characters. Look at a novel like The Killer Inside Me and and you'll see right away (from the title) what it's all about. When it comes to Thompson, it's not what it's about, it's how it's about it (to quote Roger Ebert). So, really, the relatively simple plot of a kidnapping is not the point and, if you don't like it, well the jokes on you. Why this is an 8star movie rather than a 10star one is because of the female lead. She's not bad, per se, but she's not Angelica Huston or Anette benning (see the adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters if you don't know what I'm talking about - besides it's a better movie and you should start there for contemporary noir - it's the best of the 1990s and challenges Blood Simple for the title of best since Chinatown). She simply doesn't have the chops (or the looks for that matter) and though she and Patric have some chemistry, I don't have it with her. So there.