Più tardi al buio

'Noir' is a film style which is now long gone. There were some good noir films and there were a great many mediocre ones, but that era, and the monochrome (posh word for 'in black and white'). But they were very much of their time, what with the supercool narration, hip dialogue, amoral heroes and generally being downs. The good guys weren't good guys and if they died, well, what did they think they were supposed to do?

At their best they weren't action films but psychological, and although many did have a passable plot, the plot wasn't what you watched them for. You watched them for the double-dealing, the treachery. When the time came for all films to be made in colour (and these days if you want to make a 'monochrome' film, you have to shoot it in colour, then let the lab reduce it to black and white because no one manufactures black and white film stock any more) they seemed to have died a death, which is probably when the mediocre noir films were made.

But writers and directors being a certain breed, they were still attracted to 'noir' in which plot comes second to character and psychology. The rather fanciful term 'neo noir' was coined to somehow contain them, but I for one put the term down more as a pretentious phrase to drop into conversation when you are chatting up a female film buff than anything which means much these days.

After Dark, My Sweet – the title is utterly gratuitous, by the way, and relates to nothing in this film – is, at the very least, a genuine neo noir, despite my misgivings about the phrase. Don't watch it for the plot, watch it for the acting, the interaction between three losers – Jason Patric, always worth the price of admission, Bruce Dern (ditto) and Rachel Ward – and the utterly convoluted, at times quite hard to follow, storyline.

It has its flaws but will keep you watching if this is your bag. It is mine. It would be pointless to outline the plot, as so many do here in IMDb reviews, and all I shall say is that if you reckon this is your bag, you won't be disappointed. Fans of car chases, shoot-outs, violence, neat endings and 'story' would be well advised to look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you fancy an intriguing 'neo noir' give it a whirl. You won't be disappointed. And if you can make head or tail of it, award yourself a brownie point or two. But it ain't half bad, and then some.

In James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet, drawn from Jim Thompson's moody suspense novel, Jason Patric gives a late riff on early Brando. He plays `Kid' Collins, a `retired' boxer who spent some spells in mental institutions after killing an opponent in the ring; now he's frozen into a perpetual fighter's crouch.

Now on the road, he drifts into a bar frequented by Rachel Ward and her unexplained Cornish accent (still a juicer, she's not quite the slatternly shrew of the book). She takes him home and stashes him in a trailer out back among the date palms. Next, up pops `Uncle' Bud (Bruce Dern), who suborns Patric into a half-baked scheme for kidnapping a rich kid. As happens with such schemes, things go awry (the kid turns out to be a diabetic, for one thing), and it falls to Patric to put matters right by a supreme act of self-sacrifice.

But the somnolent pace and elliptical plotting that worked in Thompson's telling sit uncomfortably on the screen. Even in the 1950s, the novel felt that it belonged to the conventions of a decade (or two) earlier – it's a Depression-era, or immediate post-war kind of story. Fast-forwarding it to the 1990s proved more a shock than it could sustain, a disparity exaggerated by misguided fealty to the book.

While there's some fussy updating (the anonymous sticks of Thompson's vision become a faintly upscale desert enclave; an airport replaces the bus terminal), elements that need freshening stick out as anachronisms. For instance, the solicitous attraction felt by the 50-year-old bachelor doctor (George Dickerson) toward Patric can only be homoerotic. While Thompson, chafing under the constraints of his time, left that to be distantly inferred, there's no reason to be coy about it more than 30 years later (there's little coy about the lovemaking between Ward and Patric). To his credit, Dickerson gives the game away with his doomed looks of longing; was it Charles Laughton who remarked `They can't censor the gleam in my eye?' And the long fuse between Ward and Patric sputters on and on; the movie could only be improved by losing half an hour of downing drinks and exchanging alternating glances of hatred and lust.

The best thing about After Dark, My Sweet is Patric's performance, even if, in keeping with the fads of the 1950s, it gives off too many whiffs of `method.' At least he gives the role his best shot. The movie's flaws, however, can't be ascribed to Thompson. Latter-day filmings of his work, like The Grifters of the same year and (especially) The Kill-Off a year before, show there's plenty of punch left in the old pulpmeister.

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.

Ex-boxer turned drifter, Kid Collins (Patric), wafts his way into the life of a con-man and a drunk. Wanting to stay below the radar, Collins takes refuge with a woman that trades shelter for work. The death of her husband has plummeted her into a world of alcohol and rage. As Collins begins to build a relationship with her, she shares with him details of a kidnapping plan that her and her 'Uncle' have been working on. Thinking that Collins is nothing more than a mental lackey, they persuade him to help with the diabolical plan. Little do they know that the monsters struggling inside Collins' mind are about to be unleashed onto the world. As the plan begins to disintegrate before their eyes, loyalties are lost, and nobody can be trusted.

What an amazing find! When I began watching this film I was not expecting to be so surprised. Jason Patric is spectacular in this film and demonstrates powerfully his ability to control and maintain a troubled character. I never once felt that he had stepped out of character during this performance. This is due in part to the exceptional direction by James Foley that creates a story so imaginative and real that you begin to feel as if this could be a town next to yours. Foley gives us flawed characters that take away that image of perfection and helps build deeper emotional ties. Foley also never gives anything away. Throughout this entire film, I never knew what was going to happen next. This is surprising for a Hollywood notorious for 'jumping the gun'.

Patric's performance with Foley's direction coupled with a completely terrifying secondary characters (like Bruce Dern and Rachel Ward), After Dark My Sweet is a true diamond in the rough.

Grade: ***** out of *****

The first of two Jim Thompson adaptations released in 1990 (the other being the more well-known GRIFTERS), AFTER DARK has all of Thompson's hallmarks: dangerous women, the confidence game, and characters that are either not as dim as others suspect them of being, or not as harmless.

Jason Patric is superb as a former boxer disqualified from the sport for life due to an incident in the ring (director James Foley uses RAGING BULL-esquire sequences to flesh out the back story) and the too-little-seen Rachel Ward also delivers a great performance. But Bruce Dern is the film's secret weapon: his sweet-talking grifter Uncle Bud subtly commands each of his scenes.

there's almost no comic relief in this film, so watch it prepared to be sucked into the void.