everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In contention for one of the dumbest titles of the year. "After Dark, My Sweet," which has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and which sounds like a Zucker brothers parody, a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Murder, My Sweet." Actually it's considerably better than that. I didn't mind the narration by a dead man. That's an established convention by now, shocking though it may have been in 1950's "Sunset Boulevard." The story has Jason Patric, who doesn't seem to know how to spell his last name, as a washed-up ex boxer, working from place to place as a handyman, until he winds up at the desert spread of widow Rachel Ward, who welcomes him with open arms except that they don't quite open. Through her, he meets a dodgy old character, Bruce Dern.Ward and Dern have cooked up a kidnapping scheme. They'll nab the little boy of a rich family, secrete him in Ward's house, and collect a king's ransom before returning him. But, as usual in these schemes, the center cannot hold, things fall apart. Everybody appears to be on the verge of double crossing everybody else. There's an automatic pistol that changes hands. To make things more complicated, the kid is a diabetic.The cute little sick boy is played by James Cotton. He's a sweet kid. He only says a few lines, and doesn't complain even when he's going into shock. This is in strict contrast to my own boy who, at that age, would never shut up. I had to beat him senseless to keep him quiet, but it worked. He hasn't spoken to me in twenty years but I understand his mime act is widely celebrated in Europe.Jason Patric does pretty well by the role of the slouching, disheveled, not-quite-all-there patsy, taciturn and suspicious. Rachel Ward gives a highly animated performance that contrasts nicely with Patric's reticence. Bruce Dern toggles between astonishment and supreme confidence.Best performance: George Dickerson as the well-meaning but meddling Doctor Goldberg, a paragon of probity. His expression bleeds with bourgeois concern. He NEEDS to help you. He was equally believable in an evil role in "The Parallax View." I found the story itself confusing. I don't know why the guy was who put a hole through Bruce Dern, or why. I still don't know what was going on in Rachel Ward's mind. And Patric himself is an enigma, despite the philosophical mutterings.Yet the film is involving. There's a scene in which Patric, dressed in rags, tumbles off the back of a truck he's been riding on, lights on the lavender sand of a bleak desert at twilight, and breaks the bottle of wine he has stashed in his jacket. He stumbles to his feet and listens to the silent wasteland. It's the kind of desperation I've been trying to avoid all my life.

After Dark, My Sweet is a film with a classic noir set-up: a desperate man teams up with a violent drifter and an alcoholic widow to kidnap a rich child. Director James Foley takes this plot and makes the best film that could possibly have been made with an already good premise. It helps that this is based on a short novel by Jim Thompson, a writer whose pulpy crime plots-which focus more on twisted characters than plot details-seem to work especially well on the screen.The main character here is ex-boxer Kid Collins, a drifter who is troubled by an incident from his past. He's so troubled that he seems strange to everyone he encounters; this inspires extreme reactions so that people he has just met are equally as likely to try physical violence on him as they are to try to take him home. His skewed perspective is especially well represented by scenes that suddenly end with jarring transitions that seem to strike like lightning. Troubled as he is, he usually seems to have the best interests of others at heart. Given a chance to escape the plot he's about to be pulled into, he refuses it because he sees a chance for a real connection with the widow.So, this film has all the best elements of noir: a troubled anti-hero, a desperate criminal plot, and a sense of weary inevitability in the way the plot unfolds. The visuals, editing, direction, and acting are all top notch and this has one of those great endings that gives the viewer a new way to look at everything that has happened before. This compares well with the best noir and neo-noir films ever made; in fact, I'm shocked by its obscurity.

Three losers, a dirty ex-cop (Bruce Dern), an alcoholic seductress (Rachel Ward), and a punchy boxer (Jason Patric) become entwined in a botched kidnapping caper. Believe no one, trust no one, especially your partners in the crime. The story unfolds entirely from the viewpoint of the three kidnappers. "After Dark My Sweet" is slow, but never boring or predictable. I can't say I was totally satisfied with the outcome, and some plot threads dangle uncomfortably. Nevertheless, a better than average noir film, with competent character development and acting, nice photography, and interesting musical score. Marginally recommended. - MERK

It's a shame that this wasn't very good because I really miss film noir and try my best to see as many of the newer Neo-Noirs as possible. The first thing I noticed about this movie was the poor lead performance from Jason Patric. He looks too scruffy to lead a film like this, and his general lack of enthusiasm doesn't do much to get the audience into the film. The rest of the film pretty much falls apart around him, as the characters aren't consistent and the plot isn't very well worked, and never becomes overly exciting. The acting is all rather downbeat and in trying to put in good performances, none of the cast really manage it. The plot follows a retired boxer who has escaped from a loony bin. He stops at a bar for a drink and soon meets a young widow named Fay. She lets him stay on a caravan on her land, and things start looking up for the ex-mental patient. However, things take a turn towards the wrong side of the law when Fay's uncle Bob turns up and convinces the pair to partake in a kidnapping that he's planning. This leaves the scruffy, lunatic, ex-boxing drifter in a sticky situation, as he to decide where his loyalties lie...I haven't read the book by Jim Thompson upon which this film is based, and given my viewing of this film; I'm not going to bother. After Dark, My Sweet continually tries to instil the same feeling that made the classic noirs of the forties and fifties such a delight, but it always fails as the director has forgotten to give the audience any reason to care for the characters and their plights. Director James Foley also directed the very decent Glengarry Glen Ross, in which he managed to pull very strong performances out of his cast members, which suggests to me that he's a director who needs big stars in order to make his films work. The cinematography is good, but doesn't fit the tone of the film at all. This sort of film got its name for the black and white picture, so it's always going to be difficult to create a noir atmosphere with a crisp and clear colour picture. That being said, the film does look nice and the director captures the locations well. On the whole, I can't recommend this film because it doesn't do what it set out to; but anyone going into the movie expecting only a nineties thriller shouldn't be too disappointed.