After Hours

Martin Scorsese, USA 1985, 97 minutes

After Hours is a strange and bewildering black comedy set in New York. The film follows Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne, also in Big Blue and Quiz Show) through a night of disaster which begins when he meets Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a cafe. Based loosely on the plot of the Wizard of Oz, Hackett attempts to get home from the wrong side of town after losing all of his money.

As the night creeps on, Hackett gets involved with avantgarde sculptors, a beautiful S & M crazed female (Linda Fiorentino), two thieves (Cheech & Chong) and is hunted by a gang of thugs who think he is responsible for a number of local house break-ins. After Hours is heavily reliant on its plot, mainly because there is no star comedian acting the lead role or dominating the smaller parts. Each character scene is carefully linked and adds to the overall picture of Marcy's fate and Hackett's misfortune.

Scorsese manages to capture the events in his normal fascinating directorial manner and the whole plot is likened to a classic farce. It is not only fun however, but gripping and tense to watch.

Although After Hours is not one of the better known Scorsese films and was the first for a decade to not feature Robert De Niro, it is a definite "must see."

Review by Mark Bauer
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98

Originally written as a film school assignment by Joseph Minion, After Hours was offered to Scorsese while he was trying to get backing for The Last Temptation of Christ. It is the story of computer operator Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne, last seen cheerfully decomposing in An American Werewolf in London) and what happens when he goes to visit Marcie (Rosanna Arguette) in her Soho loft, and his money blows out of the taxi window, and Marcie isn't home, and things go from bad to worse until he is being pursued by a bloodthirsty mob....

This kind of paranoia-fantasy farce needs absolute control to keep it on the right side of logic. One of the strengths of the film is that everything that happens to Paul, however horrific, is possible. Scorsese orchestrates the convoluted plotline beautifully his genius lies in knowing exactly how much to show us to keep the story moving. After Hours has a compulsive rhythm in both the editing and acting that pulls us into the spiralling absurdity.

Dunne's preformance as the straight man up against bohemian New York is one of the most painfully funny of recent years. Rarely out of the frame, he continually finds new ways of expressing total incredulity, culminating in "oh wow!...oh...wow!" when the police hang up on him. Rosanna Arquette is also excellent as the fruitcake who gets him into this fine mess. Much of the dialogue was improvised, probably, you feel, at three in the morning after fifteen cups of coffee.

While contrasting thematically with the main body of Scorese's work, After Hours is on a par with his best. His mastery of all the tools of film-making is as much in evidence here as in Raging Bull, and despite the comedy, the emotion is equally tangible. This is a must-see: a rare modern comedy that gains with repeated viewing.

Review by Andrew Abbott
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94