Jason Daniel Baker Eccentric drifter Collie (Patric) left a career in boxing following a nervous breakdown. Having escaped a mental institution he wanders...And wanders...And wanders until one humid day he finds himself in the wrong town, stumbles into the wrong bar and meets Fay (Ward) -the wrong kind of older woman.In need of someone to care for him some way, some how Kevin is vulnerable to her entreaties though she pretty obviously looks down on him. Her flirtations are punctuated by insults no self-respecting person would tolerate. She waves red flags like a matador but Kevin has no place to go. Taken back to her place and offered a job with room and board the fly contemplates settling into the web.Fay takes Kevin to dinner and introduces him to Uncle Bud (Dern) - a mysterious older man who is a hundred different kinds of bad news. The quirky, charismatic, charming career criminal has a business proposition for Kevin. His instincts tell him to split especially after his new acquaintances have each warned him about the other. But a guy with limited resources can only get so far. In his case the fly nearly settles into a different kind of web which makes Fay's look appetizing.Jason Patric was on the verge of Hollywood superstardom before he was 25. His performance in The Lost Boys (1987), The Beast of War (1988), this film and Rush (1991) not only made him a heart-throb to millions of young women but also established him as a serious actor capable of giving edgy performances consistently. The career on the A-list which seemed almost certain to be his eluded him perhaps because he eluded it.Patric's first screen role was as Bruce Dern's drug-addict son in a dumb 1985 TV movie called 'Toughlove'.

chaos-rampant I saw this as part of my cinematic Jim Thompson quest.It's a subject of debate whether or not neo noir is really, importantly noir. What used to be a type of film that spoke of a life in the city as disorienting and the beginning of illusions in the mind born from it, is now merely a template and what used to be a socially conscious film that directly addressed the fabric of its world is now only cinematically conscious maneuvre. Neo noir is not so much an expression then as it is an idiom.This is an intriguing study of that noir cosmos in cinematic terms.We have the hapless ex-boxer schmuck who's taken one too many beatings in the ring enter a world that seems to be lying in wait for him, specifically him to set it in motion. He's foiled in an ensuing kidnap scheme, so far a traditional noir device where the fates pull the strings. Here comes the revision though.By becoming aware of another scheme to which he is the victim, he's no longer swept up in this world. The movie then presents us with a situation where by effecting control upon that pre-existing world, by realizing that he's part of a noir narrative and that he won't simply consign to be the cog, he imagines his own noir narrative in which the woman, his only chance for redemption, can be nothing else but the femme fatale.This idea is born in him out of suspicion for a world he sees where no one cares or loves. This world, which the femme fatale codifies with her presence in film noir, is here refuted by the actual woman thought to be the femme fatale - instead, she represents the salvation of a genuine contact.We share for all this his point of view. Meaning his shifting role from puppet to puppeteer is experienced internally. This is the difference for me between the lesser neo-noirs, mere ornamental homages like Body Heat or LA Confidential, and the important ones. That what used to be experienced as a cruel world in traditional film noir is now transferred inside the mind, where the noir conventions manifest as illusions and chimeras. Lynch does this in his films and also Memento. In a roundabout way, these films (especially Lynch) give us the genesis of noir inside the head of the author, the creation myth behind the world where the hapless shmuck is foiled by the fates.The intelligent design of this is greatly hampered by a last minute twist, a simple cruelty as we often find in Jim Thompson. He was adept at the randomly cruel potboiler where morality is a thin veneer violently scraped away, but here I find it stands in the way.

Jason Forestein 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.

Andy (film-critic) 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 *****