After the Sunset (2004)

After the Sunset arrives from 2004, a Brett Ratner heist comedy starring Pierce Brosnan as a retired master thief, Woody Harrelson as the FBI agent who will not leave him alone, and Salma Hayek as the girlfriend who does the actual work. It is set in the Bahamas, shot in the Bahamas, and possessed of the moral and political ambition of a hotel brochure. Roger Ebert called it skillfully made but unnecessary. He was being generous about the skill.

The cast is notably integrated for a mainstream caper of its era: Don Cheadle as a gangster tycoon, Naomie Harris as a local constable, Russell Hornsby in support. None of this is offered as a statement, and the film makes no comment on race whatsoever. Hayek's Lola is a capable partner in crime, which earns the picture a sliver of credit, though critics at the time flagged the relentless ogling and macho posturing that keeps the camera in its expected place. There is a scene in which Brosnan kisses a squeegee man who turns out to be his girlfriend in disguise. The scene is a heterosexual gag. No queer content attends it.

On every other front the film is a desert. No climate concern, no critique of capital, no body acceptance, no neurodivergent characters, no historical revision, no sermonizing of any kind. It celebrates diamonds, bridge suites, and the pleasures of doing nothing on someone else's dime. The film preaches nothing because it believes nothing, and there is a strange integrity in that. We are left with a breezy, unpretentious diversion, which is the only category it ever wanted.