D: James Foley. P: Robert Redlin, Ric Kidney.
W: Robert Redlin, James Foley. Ph: Mark Plummer. M: Maurice Jarre. St: Jason
Patric (Kevin ‘Kid’ Collins, known as Collie), Rachel Ward (Fay Anderson),
Bruce Dern (Garrett ‘Uncle Bud’ Stoker), George Dickerson (Doctor Goldman), Rocky
Giordani (Bert)
“I just had to keep going. I had to have the
end come”
Grounded in honest, nuanced portrayals of misfits
and losers, Foley’s updating of a Jim Thompson novel is a haunting evocation of
timeless noir themes. Utilising flashbacks and voiceover, it transmits a
familiar sense of entrapment, psychological and physical, which contrasts
effectively with the empty, open highway that offers the protagonist an escape
route he never takes – until too late.
The script retains the tang of Thompson’s
dialogue and the sourness of his worldview; hopelessness clings to the characters
like sweat. The chief conduit is Patric’s transient, punch-drunk ex-boxer, a
noir archetype who once beat an opponent to death, and whose mental health is
as unstable as his temper. “A man in your condition is easily influenced,” says
the doctor who takes an (implicitly homoerotic) interest in him. “You can see
the potential for tragedy.”
Shambling, spaced-out appearance to the
contrary, Collie does indeed intuit the danger he courts when he accepts a ride
and a job from Rachel Ward’s alcoholic widow, and subsequently a pivotal role
in a half-cocked kidnap scheme cooked up by the shifty Uncle Bud (a superb turn
from Dern, who looked back on this role as a mid-career resurrection). Yet
Collie rejects the doctor’s advice, as well as his offer of refuge, and stays
with Amy, compelled by something beyond mere desire. In classic noir style, it
is a force he can neither entirely comprehend nor control: “I couldn’t walk
away... It just seemed like something I had to do, like I’d been set in a rut
and had to follow it out to the end.”
Collie wrong-foots his new companions much
like pretty-boy Patric – who is captivating, thoroughly absorbed in his role –
may have surprised the few filmgoers who saw this muted drama at the cinema. Anticipating
a double cross – indeed, he plants the seed in Bud’s brain – Collie is no patsy.
Patric, channelling the Method, plays him with a boxer’s stance,
guard up, his violent mood swings keeping the others off theirs. This is a
chamber piece full of discord. Reciprocal mistrust hangs in the air and occasionally
flares; nuances of character are a combustible brew, especially when debate
turns to the fate of the boy they have abducted – the scion of a wealthy local
family who, it transpires, has diabetes.
While the plot mechanics are obvious – almost
by default, criminal endeavours in noir end in failure – the interaction of the
characters, and their realisation by the actors, makes After Dark an
uncomfortably intimate experience. Bud, who claims to be an ex-detective, affects
an easy-going, trust-me manner that masks the desperation (and ineptitude) of a
man who has crossed the wrong people and needs this deal to pay off. Amy, theoretically
a femme fatale, comes out swinging with cynical retorts, but is not as tough as
she appears. Mentally scarred by marriage to a bad egg, living in limbo among
neglected date palms (remnants of a get-rich-quick wheeze), she salves her
wounds with liquor. This also blurs her judgment, hence her involvement with
Bud and, in a different sense, with Collie. Their love-hate dynamic acquires a
dangerous edge when Collie accuses her of harmful intentions towards the boy. (The
scenes with the youngster, incidentally, are directed with restraint and sensitivity.)
The year of the film’s release was a
significant one for neo-noir, and for Thompson adaptations in particular. It is
superior to The Kill-Off and more than holds its own against the
Oscar-nominated The Grifters. Set on the edge of the California desert, there
is a kind of sickly amber glow to the images that magnifies the hothouse
intensity of the drama – not so much the sputtering romance of Collie and Fay;
more the tension among the principals as a group.
The denouement finds Collie once again confounding
expectations, trying to make the most of a bad deal, not for himself – a true
noir anti-hero, he has accepted the inevitable – but for Fay: “When a man stops
caring what happens to him, all the strain is lifted from him… and he can see
people exactly as they are.” In Thompson’s world there was scant opportunity
for heroism; in Foley’s retelling, Collie’s final act provides at least an
approximation. Kevin Grant
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