After Dark, My Sweet is a 1990 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by James Foley and starring Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, and Rachel Ward. It is based on the 1955 Jim Thompson novel of the same name. Plot Ex-boxer Kevin "Kid" Collins is a drifter and an escapee from a mental hospital. In a desert town near Palm Springs he meets widow Fay Anderson who convinces him to help fix up the neglected estate her husband left and lets him sleep in a trailer out back, near her dying date palms. Her acquaintance "Uncle Bud" shows up. Calling himself an ex-cop, he has long been hatching a scheme to kidnap a rich man's child and needs somebody like Collins to help carry it out. Reluctant in the beginning, Collins tries to leave and encounters Doc Goldman, who immediately can tell the young man needs to be under medical observation. Doc takes a personal interest in Collins that might include a physical attraction as well. He intrudes on Collins' relationship with the alcoholic Fay. Collins is persuaded by Uncle Bud to execute the kidnapping plan. Cast Jason Patric as Kevin "Kid" Collins Rocky Giordani as Bert Rachel Ward as Fay Anderson Bruce Dern as Garrett "Uncle Bud" Stoker Mike Hagerty as Truck Driver George Dickerson as Doc Goldman Corey Carrier as Jack Production Filming locations Filming took place in Mecca, California, part of the Coachella Valley. Reception Critical response Film critic Roger Ebert put this on his "Great Movies" list and wrote in his Chicago Sun-Times review: "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." Variety also received the film favorably: "Director-cowriter James Foley has given this near-perfect adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel a contempo setting and emotional realism that make it as potent as a snakebite...Lensed in the arid and existential sun-blasted landscape of Indio, Calif, the pungently seedy film creates a kind of genre unto itself, a film soleil, perhaps." 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." Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone wrote: "Patric is sensational as Collie; the pretty-boy actor ... is