After Dark, My Sweet

1990 Directed by James Foley

All they risked was everything.

The intriguing relationship between three desperados, who try to kidnap a wealthy child in hope of turning their lives around.

Jason Patric Rocky Giordani Rachel Ward Bruce Dern Tom Wagner James E. Bowen Jr. George Dickerson Napoleon Walls Corey Carrier Jeanie Moore James Cotton Burke Byrnes Mike Hagerty

114 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Steve G 🟨🟥 ★★★★½

The 80s and 90s Neo-Noir Project
I had never really prioritised watching After Dark, My Sweet because its title and poster made it look like some tawdry erotic thriller from Zalman King.
Now while I LOVE tawdry erotic thrillers by Zalman King, they're not something I would go out of my way to watch, especially now they don't show them after 11:30 on Sky Movies. But if this film didn't have a title that means absolutely NOTHING in the context of its story then I would have sought it out a lot sooner. I wish I had sought it out a lot sooner because this is a fantastic film.
The central plot is not unfamiliar and all of its elements…
Review by chavel ★★★½ 17

Very good pulp melodrama with Jason Patric as a down on his luck drifter named Collie who is looking for a friend in Palm Springs (who he never finds) and ends up hooking up with a couple of misfits with a harebrained scheme to take a rich family's child for ransom. Rachel Ward is alcoholic Fay, but with the tall frame with those legs that go on for days, she's also a sexpot. Bruce Dern is typecast as that ingratiating sleaze who always goes by Uncle Bud, a come-on big honcho who seems to know his way around small scams but not the hefty ones.
A number of elliptic flashbacks hit us with Collie getting punch-drunk in the boxing ring,…
Review by Jordan Horowitz ★★★★

What a strange, poetic, compelling gem of a picture. Jason Patric is incredible here.
Review by Brian Formo ★★★ 3

Dusty and windswept southwestern 90s neo-noir is a favorite specific sub-genre of mine. They're rarely the best movies but they're oh so watchable. Everyone pours a shot a minute, and are collar-tug hot. In this one, Bruce Dern is a sleazeball and Jason Patric is a dead ringer for Mark Ruffalo and also an actual ringer with hands of stone. It never really coalesced fully for me but there's just something about the setting that makes the pacing perfectly mysterious. Enjoyable to watch for sleight of hand.
Review by Waldo ★★★★ 4

A kinda forgotten film noir, from a Jim Thompson novel. James Foley's adaptation is a straightforward, desperate thriller about an equally desperate kidnapping. No one is at their best at the present stage of their lives here. Fay, played with elegance and sex appeal by Rachel Ward, is a borderline alcoholic widow who lives alone in a big but decrepit house. Kid Collins is a drifter ex boxer, played real well by Jason Patric, is lured into a criminal scheme that catches him off guard. Finally, there's Uncle Bud, a slimy ex cop played by the legendary Bruce Dern. This trio kidnaps a kid from a rich family. Razor sharp and brimming with rage, sex and murder. I tell ya! It's still pretty great.
Review by Andrew Draper ★★★★

Going to shout out Katie Stebbins again, because I never would have gotten around to this one if not for her 1990 watchlist project. She polled her followers and compiled the results on her blog: this movie had 11 admirers out of the 300 plus people who responded. If I'd seen it before the poll, I would have been the 12th.
As far as genre goes, I don't have a passion for noir the way I do for horror, but I had enough familiarity to think I knew what I was getting into with this movie: moral ambiguity, bleakness, crime and betrayal. But I did not in fact really know. There is something weirdly compelling about this movie, and at…
Review by luckyhoss ★★★★★

I read the Jim Thompson book on which this movie is based early this year, in a fit of needing to tear through a bunch of pulp novels. I’ve seen a few movies now based on his books (The Grifters – made the same year, The Killer Inside Me), and they don’t always resonate with me, but this one felt perfect and very true to the book.
This movie is a bit of a forgotten modern noir, and in some ways I understand why it wasn’t a huge success. The plot, while simple on the surface, does get somewhat complicated when it comes to trying to figure out everyone’s angle. It’s almost hard to discern at times if the scheme…
Review by Marie 1

Sense of place: 5 stars
Bruce Dern: 5 stars
Other stuff: no idea. at least some stars
sorry but medium-to-long-term followers of this account know that any movie that conveys the essence of not-LA not-SF California, which is an awful but somehow transcendent ordeal, gets a big time thumbs up from me
Review by kalebhorton

I saw this quite a long time ago and was surprised on a rewatch earlier this week that it was branded as an erotic thriller, which is funny because it's got about 30 seconds of weird sex in it and the nudity is strictly male, and specifically the ass region of the male. So if we're looking at this as an erotic thriller, from this man's perspective it is a failure beyond failures.
Speaking of nudity, this is a great movie about the greater Palm Springs area, which is way grittier than the town branding suggests and has a really cursed vibe when it's off-season. You can see how somebody who frequents a pool hall at the edge of town…
Review by Bob Cashill ★★★★

A career highlight for co-stars Jason Patric and Rachel Ward, and the frustrating Foley, who made two other great films (AT CLOSE RANGE and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS), not much else of note--and after a decade away from the big screen is poised to have back-to-back commercial hits, his first, with the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY sequels. Funny how things work out.
Review by Wilson ★★★★

James Foley has a fairly uninspiring filmography for someone who has made some great films. He directed At Close Range, Glengarry Glen Ross and After Dark, My Sweet, but he has more misses than hits, and now it appears he is directing the next two Fifty Shades... films. He has went from working with material by Jim Thompson and David Mamet, to working for E.L. James. Still, I hope his grandkids enjoy their time at University, since that is what Foley appears to be working for now.
After Dark, My Sweet is a murky neo-noir, that is based on the Jim Thompson book of the same name. It has a good cast, though not a great one. Jason Patric, not…
Review by Varghese ★★★★½

Across the deserted horizons a noirish soul wanders recalling painful tendencies amidst flashbacks.A character study of loneliness and a triumph of modern noir.

Recent reviews

Review by Lloyd Holden ★★★★

Sexy film noir in color, based on Jim Thompson book.
Review by Marquis de Suave ★★★½

Despite the cover, this is not a Cinemax late nighter. There’s one sex scene without any nudity. Those hoping to see Jason Patric or Rachel Ward nude will be disappointed. However, those seeking out a dark, brooding neo-noir will want to check this out. It’s based closely on a novel by Jim Thompson, the master of this style of hyper-cynical crime fiction. Jason Patric narrates the story, but like Tom Neal in Detour, he’s hardly reliable. He keeps claiming he’s smart while making one judgment error after another. He gets involved with seductive femme fatale Rachel Ward and his dead husband’s sleazy friend Bruce Dern. After the first half of getting to know these rather unlikable characters, the second half…
Review by Manolo Bangbang ★★★★

Consigue fácilmente esa sensación subterránea de peligro, violencia y fatalidad tan consustancial a las novelas de Jim Thompson. Además, es una chulada por muchos motivos (elenco, paisaje, foto y su condición de puesta a contracorriente.)
Review by Night miner ★★★★

Tour-de-force performances all-round
Review by Mike Mariano ★

I hope Jason Patric eventually gets to meet his friend Jack Billingsley.
This movie commits to its tone but I absolutely could not get into it. Too dry, too empty, and the kidnapping plot at its core was just absurd and sucked up all the oxygen that could be fueling the relationships instead.
Good last ten minutes, though!
Review by ThePoeticCritic ★★★★

Matters of control
Without and also within
Noir as more than style
Review by Will Mendoza ★★★★

Jason Patric drunkenly kidnapping the wrong child, thinking nobody would notice is pretty awesome.
Review by Alvarez78 ★★★★

Neo neoir existencialista dirigido com mão de mestre por Folley. O habitual canastro Patric, mostra que afinal sabe representar, muito graças a um fabuloso e atormentado personagem com milhentas camadas de cinzento. Fulgurante e obscura pérola dos 90's.
Review by The Kong's Speech ★★★★½

Adapted from a novel by Jim Thompson, the neo-noir After Dark, My Sweet is a triumph of grim, pulpy storytelling filled with twists. Former boxer and current mental hospital escapee Kid Collins (Jason Patric) walks into a sleepy California town, claiming to be looking for a friend. Instead, he makes the acquaintance of seductive widow Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward) and her mysterious associate, a supposed former cop who calls himself Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern). Before long, the three have hatched a plot to get rich by kidnapping a wealthy family's young son. Anyone who has ever seen a noir film knows it can't be that simple.
The most brilliant thing about James Foley's film is the way it keeps the…
Review by Molly Ringworm ★★★★★

Excellent hirsute representation with the protagonist here.
Review by Fredrik Fyhr ★★★

Eye-catching, but ultimately rather over-elaborate film noir-drama in which Patric plays mentally injured ex-boxer who drives around the American Midwest, meets femme fatale (Ward) with suspicious uncle (Dern) who wants him to take part in a kidnapping. Standard framing for a story like this, but the film, based on a novel by Jim Thompson, tries from beginning to end to make it more interesting and sometimes succeeds; the tempo is nice and slow, Patric is sympathetically cryptic in the lead role and you always wonder what the film is looking for. The script's pretentious dialogues and the tense atmosphere constantly threaten to get in the way, but it is not until some extra twists at the end that the film loses the ball completely. Still a pretty interesting film because of its special feel and attitude, worth seeing for those who like this genre.
Review by Matthew Rice ★½

From the director of the two "Fifty Shades" sequels which probably explains why it was so awful and boring. What a waste of talent and what a laughable schmaltzy twist.
If you're looking for a tense, kidnap-crime drama, forgetaboutit...the ransom aspect of this film is barely there; pushed to the background by yawn inducing faux noir dialogue about relationships and life and stuff.