‘Light Sleeper’
Willem Dafoe and writer/director Paul Schrader are responsible for some of cinema’s most rewarding collaborations (Last Temptation of Christ, Affliction), but my favorite will always be Light Sleeper. Dafoe plays John LeTour, a 40-year-old high-class drug dealer (and a reformed addict) who searches aimlessly for purpose as his boss (Susan Sarandon) makes plans to give up the life. After reconnecting with his old girlfriend, Marianne (a mesmerizing Dana Delaney), John is inevitably drawn back into the dangerous drug underworld. Disillusioned and consumed by sad reflection, Dafoe is never better as the bummed out antihero in one of the most underrated films of the early 1990s.