utgard14 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.

Mark Adams A masterpiece on all levels, with a constant undercurrent of high-voltage electricity charging every moment. A spectacularly beautiful movie.From Wikipedia entry; I cannot put it any better: Roger Ebert in his Great films 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." 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."

ccthemovieman-1 Intense actors like Bruce Dern, Jason Patrick and Rachel Ward combine to make this modern-day film noir a winner. Of the three, I don't know who was most interesting as all offer good performances and intriguing characters.Patric does the narration in this noir, playing an ex-boxer and mental patient. Wow, that alone makes for an interesting guy! He looks dumb, but he isn't. Ward is the slinky, attractive, cynical, intelligent and compassionate co- conspirator of a kidnapping plan that goes bad. Bruce Dern also is in the mix and Dern never fails to fascinate in about any film.The movie could be considered kind of downer to the average viewer, but I found it fascinating....and I don't like depressing movies normally. What I found was a kind of quirky crime film. Take a look and see if you agree. This is pretty unknown film that shouldn't have that status because it's simply a good story and well-done.

mrezyka If in the 90's you're adapting a book written in the 50's, set the bloody thing in the 50's and not the '90's. See, 40 year old mores and values tend not to play as well, or ring as true, that far down the road. It's a simple rule that Hollywood habitually keeps violating. And that's the problem with this film. It should have been set in the era it was written in. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, but nooo. I'd elaborate, but bmacv's comment spells it out quite well. I'll limit my commentary to Rachel Ward. She looks like she dieted her ass completely out of existence for this role. As a result, she looks like a crack ho' on chemotherapy, and is about as sexy as a gay leather couch in drag. I found her "I could die at any moment" look quite disconcerting, and it greatly detracted from her supposed "hotness" and the "sexual tension" the film intended to create. Other than that, the film was quite good; a 7+ out of 10.