Critics Called ‘After Dark, My Sweet’ One of the Best Films of 1990. 36 Years Later, Audiences Are Finally Catching Up

In 1986, actor Jason Patric got his first starring role in a movie, and he was excited. It was to be produced by Mel Brooks‘ Brooksfilms, a company that was on a hot streak, having released “My Favorite Year,” David Cronenberg‘s “The Fly,” and several other movies now considered to be classics.

“They had just made ‘Frances’ and ’84 Charing Cross Road,’ and a couple of years before that, ‘The Elephant Man,'” Patric told IndieWire. “This was the biggest and most respected independent company at that time.”

Unfortunately, the movie Patric signed on for turned out to be one of Brooksfilms’ rare missteps, a nonsensical teenage riff on “Rollerball” and “Mad Max” called “Solarbabies.” Upon arriving on location in Spain, Patric quickly realized the movie was a disaster. “I got there and just went, ‘Oh my God,'” Patric said. By the time the shoot was over, Patric wasn’t even sure if he wanted to act anymore. “Here I was as a 19-year-old, almost ready to quit the business.”

Patric met with considerably more success with his next film, Joel Schumacher’s vampire movie “The Lost Boys,” which he followed up with an unconventional war picture directed by Kevin Reynolds called “The Beast.” The studio dumped “The Beast,” and barely anyone saw it, but one of the few people who did check it out was a filmmaker who would have a profound effect on Patric’s life and career: James Foley.

“I don’t know how he saw it, because it was only in two theaters for one week,” Patric said. Foley wanted to meet with Patric about a project, and the director and actor immediately hit it off. “We talked for two or three hours. He didn’t bring up the project, and he never brought it up again. But from that moment on, we were as tight as we could be.”

Foley had made a strong directorial debut with “Reckless” in 1984, then followed it up with an all-time great crime film, “At Close Range,” in 1986. The year after “At Close Range,” Foley shifted gears for “Who’s That Girl,” a romantic comedy starring Madonna and Griffin Dunne. Though the movie had a certain amount of screwball charm, it bombed with critics and audiences, and the fact that Foley couldn’t generate a hit when he had the most famous woman in the world as his star made him persona non grata with the studios.

This left both Foley and Patric wondering how they were going to make the kinds of movies they wanted to make. “I was at a point where I knew what I could do and how I wanted to do it, but nothing was coming in,” Patric said. One script that did interest Patric was an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s crime novel “After Dark, My Sweet.” He felt that the screenplay was good, but that the book was great, and had real potential. When Foley read it, he agreed, and both men saw a way to make the kind of personal film they were hungry to do.

“Both Foley and I were ready,” Patric said. “I laugh now, because I was only 23, but I told Foley that if I couldn’t nail this guy, I was packing it in. I knew I would only get an opportunity like this a handful of times. Look at your favorite actors, whoever they are. I don’t care if they had 40-year careers, there are only six movies you really talk about. And you know when one of those is coming along.”

‘After Dark, My Sweet’©Avenue Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Patric immersed himself in the role of “Kid” Collins, an ex-boxer who drifts into a desert town and gets ensnared in a kidnapping plot by a cynical widow (Rachel Ward) and a shifty ex-cop (Bruce Dern). He took boxing lessons and found a body language for his character that conveyed his damaged past while also keeping the audience guessing about his true nature — was he crazy, dumb, both, or neither?

The ambiguity and complexity of both Patric’s performance and the film as a whole made “After Dark, My Sweet” a hit with critics like Roger Ebert, who declared it one of the best films of 1990 and named Foley one of the most underappreciated filmmakers of his generation. Unfortunately, Ebert’s assessment of Foley still holds true — in spite of Foley going on to make the filmed adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” the deliriously entertaining teen thriller “Fear,” and dozens of hours of quality television like “House of Cards” and “Hannibal,” he’s still barely known outside of a handful of cinephiles and cultists.

Thankfully, both Foley’s reputation and that of “After Dark, My Sweet” seem to be on a bit of an upswing. The film has had at least two excellent physical media releases in the last couple of years (one from Kino Lorber and one from Imprint), and when Patric screened his personal 35mm print of “After Dark, My Sweet” at Vidiots in Los Angeles in May, he was surprised and thrilled by the sold-out crowd that showed up to help him pay tribute to Foley. He’ll be taking that same print to New York in August for two nights at the Roxy Cinema.

It’s important to Patric that audiences discover “After Dark, My Sweet” on the big screen, where Foley’s gifts can be most fully appreciated. “It’s beautifully shot in a way where you don’t notice how complicated the shots are,” Patric said. “It’s not showy in any way, but every camera movement is really connected to the scene and to the actor. And that’s imperative because it’s a subjective piece of filmmaking. I’m in every scene, and part of the difficulty and the reward of playing that character is that the audience is in the same boat with him every step of the way.”

Although “After Dark, My Sweet” wasn’t popular in its moment, it did give Patric the kind of career he wanted, at least for a while. “The movie was not financially successful at all, but it was a big critical hit,” he said. “For the next couple of years I could pretty much do what I wanted to do.” That led to an exceptional string of ambitious films like Lili Fini Zanuck’s “Rush,” Walter Hill’s “Geronimo,” Barry Levinson’s “Sleepers,” Neil LaBute’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” and Joe Carnahan’s “Narc” — giving Patric those “six movies” people talk about for years to come.

Most of those films have, like “After Dark, My Sweet,” seen their reputations rise in the decades since they were made. “I always got targeted as being dark,” Patric said. “I wasn’t doing anything darker than Pacino or De Niro did in the 1970s. The culture was just different. But I wanted to make those movies, and if they didn’t do well, that was OK. I always felt that movies should last, and it’s good if they get discovered later on when all the detritus is gone.”

“After Dark, My Sweet” will screen at the Roxy Cinema on August 5 and 6 with Jason Patric in person for post-screening Q&As.