Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I saw this film during the 1990's and I was really disappointed. It seemed to go on forever and the main storyline, about the kidnapping, was just a backdrop for dull characters who never stop talking and their boring, ill-chosen lives. It has to do with an washed-up ex-boxer who escapes form a mental hospital and drifts into a kidnapping plot for quick cash which goes awry. After that happens, we wait for something interesting to happen. Very little does and nearly all of it is dull. The action is virtually non-existent and the murders are devoid of suspense. The film began well enough and the locations are very well chosen and photographed. But very little was done with them. The acting is passable, but that's all. I have no desire to see this movie again.

"Traditional noir doesn't work in contemporary storytelling because we don't live in that world anymore." - Brian De Palma "Noir is dead for me because, historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist." - James Ellroy "After Dark, My Sweet" is an atmospheric neo-noir in which a mentally handicapped man is suckered into kidnapping a child. This may sound like a familiar noir plot – and it is - but the film nevertheless does several interesting things.Firstly, instead of a femme fatale seducing our noir hero into committing a crime, we have an elderly man played by Bruce Dern. Because Bruce is a sort of surrogate femme fatale figure who seduces the girl into seducing our protagonist, we're never quite sure how involved in the criminal scheme the film's female character is. Is she innocent? Is she a pawn? Who is really pulling the strings? Secondly, we're never quite sure if our noir hero is really mentally handicapped. Is it an act? Is he really mentally disabled? Is he simply playing everyone for a fool? Because the film deliberately withholds information, we get a slightly different rift on noir. Yes, there is a malevolent noir God pulling the strings (the crime goes vastly awry), but what the film does differently is extend this conspiracy in such a way that the principal characters themselves do not know which roles they play.In this regard, the film serves as a modern update of "Detour", a famous low budget noir narrated by a possibly insane, wholly unreliable, narrator. Here, the unreliability extends 4 ways: the three characters and the camera.8/10 – This is an archetypal story which, though it betters similar neo-noir fare ("Body Heat", "Kill Me Again", "Red Rock West", "Blood Simple", "Memento", "Bound", "The Last Seduction", "Jade" etc), still suffers from the problem which James Ellroy tries to articulate above.Made in the 1980s and 90s, these films emulate noir narratives of the 1940s and 50s, a framework which was put to rest in "Blast of Silence", arguably the last of the classical noirs. True modern noirs ("X-Files" (series), "The Wire", "Twin Peaks", "Inland Empire", "Eyes Wide Shut", "Mulholland Drive" etc), offshoots of the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, are virtually incomparable to neo and classical noirs, positing far larger worlds, global narratives that are always in flux and never resolved.Worth one viewing.

After Dark, My Sweet is a great, modern noir, filled with seedy characters, dirt roads, and, of course, sweaty characters. It seems that most of the truly great noirs of the last two or three decades have taken place in the South, where the men glisten and the ladies, um, glisten too. Why? Because it's hooooottttttttttt. And because everyone looks better wet (at least the men do - sweaty women leave me clammy). Anyway - there might be some spoilers in here. This film is a wonderful example of everything a noir should be - steady pacing (though some with attention disorders refer to it as 'slow'), clearly and broadly drawn (though not simple) characters, and tons of atmosphere. Noir, if anything, is about moods and attitudes. That's why the great ones are not marked by your traditional definitions of 'great' acting (look at Bogart, Mitchum, Hurt, and Nicholson - they (and their characters) were anything but real - but they had style and sass and in a crime movie that's exactly what you want). or quickly paced adventures (again all great noirs seem to be on slow burn like a cigarette). Great noirs create an environment and you just inhabit it with the characters for a couple hours. After Dark My Sweet let's you do that - and it let's you enjoy the company of some very interesting and complex characters. Uncle Bud and Collie are intriguing - never allowing the audience to know what really makes them tick - and Patric and Dern (I love Bruce Dern, by the way) are pitch perfect, Dern especially (see previous comment). They take the basic outlines of a character and give them depth and elicit our sympathies. The story itself is also interesting. There're better plots in the world of noir (hardly any mystery here - mostly it's suspense), but this one is solid. If anything, the simply 'okay' plot has more to do with Jim Thompson's writing than anything else. With Thompson, plots are almost secondary; he eschewed the labyrinthine tales of Hammett and Chandler for simpler stories with stronger, more confusing characters. Look at a novel like The Killer Inside Me and and you'll see right away (from the title) what it's all about. When it comes to Thompson, it's not what it's about, it's how it's about it (to quote Roger Ebert). So, really, the relatively simple plot of a kidnapping is not the point and, if you don't like it, well the jokes on you. Why this is an 8star movie rather than a 10star one is because of the female lead. She's not bad, per se, but she's not Angelica Huston or Anette benning (see the adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters if you don't know what I'm talking about - besides it's a better movie and you should start there for contemporary noir - it's the best of the 1990s and challenges Blood Simple for the title of best since Chinatown). She simply doesn't have the chops (or the looks for that matter) and though she and Patric have some chemistry, I don't have it with her. So there.

Ever read Jim Thompson? He's hard-boiled noir with the most extreme fatalism and misanthropy I've ever encountered. There are rarely private detectives in his work - just losers, psychotics and small-time con artists. This film has Thompson nailed - "If God made any real mistakes in this world, it was in giving us a will to live when we've got no excuse for it." Every character in the film balances on a razor's edge between surreal and creepy realism. There's sleazy, conniving Uncle Bud, played by Bruce Dern and spookily well-intentioned Doc Goldman played by George Dickerson. Jason Patric gives a wonderful, often heart-wrenching performance as Kid Collins, a none-too-bright, shy ex-fighter who's more scared of himself than of anyone else. Rachel Ward is Fay, the sexy femme fatale who we can't quite figure out...It's not your standard film noir, nor is it intended to be. After Dark My Sweet, along with The Grifters, are two excellent adaptations of novels by one of my favorite writers, Jim Thompson.