| After Dark, My Sweet | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | James Foley |
| Produced by | Ric Kidney Robert Redlin |
| Screenplay by | Robert Redlin James Foley |
| Story by | Jim Thompson |
| Starring | Jason Patric Rocky Giordani Rachel Ward Bruce Dern |
| Music by | Maurice Jarre |
| Cinematography | Mark Plummer |
| Editing by | Howard E. Smith |
| Distributed by | Avenue Pictures Productions |
| Release date(s) | May 17, 1990 (Cannes Film Market) August 24, 1990 (United States) |
| Running time | 114 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
After Dark, My Sweet (1990) is a neo-noir film directed by James Foley starring Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, and Rachel Ward. It is based on the 1955 Jim Thompson novel of the same name.[1]
Contents |
Ex-boxer Kevin "Kid" Collins is a drifter and an escapee from a mental hospital. He meets Fay Anderson, a widow, who convinces him to help fix up the neglected estate her ex-husband left. "Uncle Bud" talks them both into helping kidnap a rich boy for ransom money, and the ex-fighter must make decisions about his loyalties and what is right.
The filming took place in Indio, California.[2]
Film critic Roger Ebert put this film on his "great movies list" and in his 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."[3]
The staff at Variety magazine also reviewed the film favorably, writing, "Director-cowriter James Foley has given this near-perfect adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel a contempo setting and emotional realism that make it as potent as a snakebite...Lensed in the arid and existential sun-blasted landscape of Indio, Calif, the pungently seedy film creates a kind of genre unto itself, a film soleil, perhaps."[4]
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."[5].
When the video was released in 1991, Entertainment Weekly film critic Melissa Pierson wrote, "Fittingly, director James Foley (At Close Range) puts style over story, capturing the gritty, long-shadowed tone of his source material. After Dark, My Sweet looks simultaneously crisp and drenched in the yellow light of a strange dream, an effect that becomes especially haunting on video. In this alluring tour through unsettled emotional territory, Jason Patric (The Lost Boys) gives an exceptionally sharp performance as an ex-boxer with one screw loose and another turned down tight. He's drawn into a kidnapping scheme concocted by a former cop (Bruce Dern) and a sultry widow (Rachel Ward, for whom acting apparently means gesticulating). Together, they visit a place where desire and pain are indistinguishable, and everything goes twistingly awry."[6]
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 87% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 15 reviews.[7]
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