Synopsis
The intriguing relationship between three desperados, who try to kidnap a wealthy child in hope of turning their lives around.
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Cast
- Jason PatricKevin 'Kid' Collins
- Rachel WardFay Anderson
- Bruce DernGarrett "Uncle Bud" Stoker
- Rocky GiordaniBert
- Tom WagnerCounterman
- James E. Bowen Jr.Second Driver
- George DickersonDoc Goldman
- Napoleon WallsBoxing Referee
- Corey CarrierJack
- Jeanie MooreNanny
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
One of the purest and most uncompromising of modern films noir. It captures above all the lonely, exhausted lives of its characters. - 100
Time Out
Nobody trusts anybody, and they're right. Dern, always awkward, has matured into a showpiece of behavioural hairpin bends. Excellent. - 100
Variety
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. - 100
Rolling Stone
A hot-wired crime thriller that captures Thompson's flair for hard action, malicious wit and fevered eroticism. - 80
Empire
As the drama circles their inaction, this trio of excellent performances fills the screen with a form of spiritual exhaustion, and the film slumps into noir’s typically happy-clappy comeuppance of failure, betrayal and ruin. But the mood has caught on, and the film, stamped with a stunning visual emptiness, haunts the memory for long after its sour close. - 80
Los Angeles Times
Director James Foley and his co-screenwriter Robert Redlin have pulled Thompson's story out of film noir shadows and set it unflinchingly in the desert's orange-red glare. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Director James Foley and cinematographer Mark Plummer deftly conjure the sense of stifling containment that drives these characters to drink or sin, but Robert Redlin's screenplay fails to fully animate their personalities. Patric gives a tremendous, smoldering performance, but Ward fails to convey the mysterious radiance of a convincing femme fatale. Dern rounds out the unappetizing triangle with an unpleasant performance, proving himself a worthy contender in the Dennis Hopper/Harry Dean Stanton creepstakes. - 70
The New York Times
James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet is a brisk, entertaining contemporary melodrama about the kind of sleazy characters who populated California crime literature 35 years ago. That's no surprise, since the screenplay, adapted by Robert Redlin and Mr. Foley, is based on Jim Thompson's novel, published in 1955.
