the leading man is my tpye

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Film-Noir Scholars (and that includes the evolutionary sub-genre Neo-Noir) seem to Love this Jim Thompson Adaptation Directed by James Foley. The Director is at Home with this Type of Thing, but here He delivers a rather Weak and Unstylish Film.Style is Essential to Film-Noir. It's Best when Wrapped up in Surreal Flourishes that give the Sense of a World Off Its Axis, Out of its Orbit, and destined for Oblivion. Cynical Characters and Snappy Patter also work to Make the Noir World Accessible to Outsiders Peeking in on the Doomed Characters.None of that is Evident Here Except On Occasion and in Spurts. One of the Weakest Elements is the Miscasting of Rachel Ward. She looks Anemic and Awful and Hardly the Sex Magnet She is Playing. After the initial Scene in the Bar, She Loses Her Edge and Vacillates wildly in Attitude and Behavior. Jason Patric Fares much Better and Bruce Dern is Expectedly Eccentric and Scary.But the Plot is Muddled, the Kidnapping Never is Convincing and the follow-up Third-Act is All Over the Place. It's an Awkward Movie that is Never as Compelling as its Pretensions, starting with a Title that is Nonsensical. Overall, Hardly One of the Best Neo-Noirs and is about to Below Average, although as Stated above some Credentialed Critics Disagree.You Might want to Check This One Out, it's Not Awful, and Make Up Your Own Mind about its Value as a Top-Notch Neo-Noir and as an Entertainment.

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."

An ex-boxer drifts into a town and becomes involved with a rich widow and her shady friend. It moves very slowly, which is fine if the characters are interesting or the plot is compelling, but that's not the case here. The characters are very poorly developed and the plot wanders aimlessly, making for a rather dull movie. Patric's performance is somewhat one-note, with that one note being a smoldering look. The whole psychological mumbo-jumbo regarding his mental state is not the least bit interesting. Ward lacks the allure required for her role. Dern does what he can with a sketchily drawn character. The direction is journeyman at best.

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.