- Location: Wilson Library (laptop)
- Kevin "Kid" Collins (Jason Patric) is a disheveled, punch-drunk former boxer who shuffles aimlessly from town to town. He tries to explain his vagrancy to the patrons of various roadside bars and diners with stories about waiting for his crazy old friend "Jack Billingsly," but nobody believes him for a second. In fact, it doesn't take us long to piece together that Collins has recently (or perhaps not so recently) escaped from a mental institution. His constant flashbacks of one particularly bloody boxing match may be telling us how he landed there but, like so many aspects of his life, the details are muddled. It is only after meeting Faye Anderson (Rachel Ward) that Collins' life finally gets some direction.
- Faye is a sultry widow who frequents the local bar enough that the bartender greets her by name and pours the usual. After seeing Collins erupt in a fit of pugilistic violence, however, Faye hires him on to do odd jobs around her estate. Her sandy, dessicated land is the perfect embodiment of Southwestern American noir, complete with withered date trees and a scum-filled swimming pool. Showing up to complete the picture is "Uncle Bud" (Bruce Dern), a sketchy former detective who recognizes Collins and offers to put him on to "a deal." Uncle Bud's proposition to Collins is a wonderful collection of vague allusions, offhand suggestions, and cryptic warnings that no sensible man would ever want to be involved with. "This scheme's been cooking for months," Faye later warns, "and if you leave it'll go on cooking until it boils away." Collins initially takes her advice, but a chance encounter with a suspicious doctor (George Dickerson) sends him running back to Faye. Now it's time for everyone, including the audience, to find out what is at stake and what kind of people we're really dealing with.
- As it happens, Uncle Bud's scheme involves kidnapping the son of a rich family and collecting the ransom. It sounds simple enough, but complications arise almost immediately when Faye learns that Collins was a mental patient. In a beautiful scene, the camera tracks Collins through Faye's house as he rushes to a romantic rendezvous only to find...an empty house. Uncle Bud suggests that they continue with the original plan, but Collins is increasingly suspicious of Bud's machinations. Employing characteristically skewed logic, Collins decides that kidnapping the wrong boy (!) is the only way to keep from getting killed. Even after Collins miraculously manages to swap out for the correct child, the three distrustful conspirators must find a way to collect the ransom without getting caught. After Uncle Bud gets himself removed from the conspiracy, Collins gets to cook up "one last plan to make the whole thing right." Is it ever a doozy.
- The main strength of the excellent After Dark, My Sweet is just how well it obscures its characters' true motives and natures. It's obvious that Uncle Bud can't be trusted, but we never discover whether or not he really intended to shoot Collins after the kidnapping. Faye is certainly more trustworthy than Uncle Bud, but would she really have done the right thing if Collins hadn't forced her to? Probably the most paradoxical character is the doctor, whose own bizarre interest in Collins hints at as much "potential for tragedy" as anything Uncle Bud could concoct. And finally there's Collins himself. I was sure that his boxing flashbacks were going to show us why he speaks like Marlon Brando, but their real implication is much more startling. This is a clearly a man who belongs in a mental institution, and the film's final resolution is a perfect illustration of how a man who's got "the wrong slant on things" would redeem himself. It's exactly the right ending for a Jim Thompson story and one of the best modern films noir I've seen.
- Based on the novel by Jim Thompson.
- I inadvertently watched this immediately after seeing Marnie, which also gives Bruce Dern a chance to be completely sleazy.
