After dark, my sweet

Year of release : 1990

Run time : 1h47m

Genre : Thriller / Drama / Crime / Neo Noir

Cast : Jason Patric, Rachel Ward, Bruce Dern

The movie is based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Jim Thompson.

Kid Collins is a former boxer, with flashes of his fights, who escaped the mental institution, as he said, they made it too easy for him to escape, although it was nice there.

In a diner he meets Fay Anderson, a widow, who dresses in red-orange colors to match the car, house, furniture.

Fay convinces Kid to help her fix her neglected palm trees estate as he seems to be quite taken with her. Fay is hot and cold though, thing which might be or not, attributed to her drinking. She offers him a trailer situated in the back of her property, to live in.

Kid tells her that due to the fact he is a bit slow, people take advantage of him, thinking him stupid, but he isn’t and he resents those who take him for a fool.

Kid soon meets Fay’s friend, Uncle Bud, who claims to be a cop or ex cop (after meeting him Fay tells Kid to leave, for Bud is gonna involve him in something bad. Thing he does, but then comes back), who pretty soon, convinces him somehow, to kidnap the son of a wealthy family.

The movie personally bored me. I did like the twist at the end, especially when it looks like everybody is trying to take advantage of Kid, thinking him stupid, and not just use him for their benefit, but also place the blame on him.

I don’t know if the movie has scenes which were taken out, but whatever the poster of the movie is about, nothing of that transpires in the movie. It’s like the poster belongs to a different movie!

I don’t know why it’s called “After dark, my sweet” either.

The actors were good, especially Jason Patric who had to play a man with mental problems.

I didn’t like the soundtrack.

The movie grossed 2.7 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 6 million dollars, being a flop, although the critics loved it, considering it one of the purest and most uncompromising modern film noirs, loving Jason Patric’s performance.

The movie has an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 78 score on Metacritic!

You can watch the full movie for free, if you follow this link :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsoJ_mjMmFo

Rating : Could have been a contender !