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141 comments in total

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50 out of 57 people found the following comment useful :-
Scorcese's most underrated., 21 December 2004

Author: OllieZ from Wolves, England

Out of all the Scorsese films - I would have to admit this ranks in the top five. After Hours draws you into it's dark and surreal world with fantastical wonder. The characters are all interesting, the acting superb - especially Griffin Dunne - and the pacing is great.

It was made in 1985, and I can already see the techniques Scorsese used in Goodfellas - and the quick editing. It is directed and edited really well. So if you were a fan of Scorsese's frantic camera work in Goodfellas and Casino, this film is for you.

It really does put you on edge - as a viewer, you really want Dunne's character to get back home - but everything possible that could happen to him - happens. This is not just a evocation of soHo in the early 80's - it is a deeply black comedy. All the rules go out the window for Dunne's character, because after all it is after hours.

Scorsese really is the best living director at the moment - so do yourself a favour and watch this movie - it's fantastic.

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38 out of 43 people found the following comment useful :-
One of Scorsese's most underrated films, 16 November 2004

Author: klvnmatthews from New York, NY

This wasn't a big hit when it came out, but it should have been. Martin Scorsese is a master of creating atmosphere and exploring a specific setting, and he has proved that in movies like Taxi Driver and Gangs of New York. In this film he brings the SoHo of the early to mid 1980s to life in brilliant and surreal fashion. Griffin Dunne is a great Every Man character. You like him from the very first scene and you follow his adventures with excitement and dread. The tension in this film is also intense, and that is amazing for a light hearted comedy. I am always surprised to hear that people have not seen this movie, or that people don't like this movie. I urge all Scorsese fans to see it. It's one of his best, even though many critics did not like it when it came out. It's a cult hit, but it deserves to be more than that too. It's a masterpiece.

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31 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
New York Nightmare, 29 August 2002

Author: Greensleeves from United Kingdom

'After Hours' is a really dark, nightmarish comedy and is one of Martin Scorsese's most enjoyable films. Griffin Dunne is perfection as the computer operator who meets lovely but ditsy Rosanna Arquette in a diner and arranges to meet her late one night. His journey to downtown New York goes hideously wrong when he loses his taxi fare and spends the rest of the evening trying to get home. Along the way we meet feisty Linda Fiorentino, whimsical Verna Bloom, Gorgeous but hysterical Teri Garr and Dusty Springfield look alike Catherine O'Hara. We also get to witness suicide, murder, robbery and vigilante mobs in this tale of big city madness. The camera-work is stupendous and features every trick in the book. There is much to admire in this film and thankfully it now has a DVD release with a commentary by the Director and star.

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26 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
An Existential Nightmare, 24 December 2004
Author: pekinman from Illinois

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I was living in Los Angeles in the golden '80s, the last great age of American films I think. I watched the video of 'After Hours' so many times it wore out and am happy it is now available on DVD. But I hesitate to buy said DVD. Why? This film is extremely disturbing, and not really a comedy but a gruesome and pitch black snapshot of NYC culture that cuts very close to the bone for those of us who knew the nightlife of Sunset Boulevard on the other side of the country. The similarities between NYC and LA at that time were legion, the only difference being the cavernous, sinister streets of NY were not lined with palm trees. David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' best captures that aspect of danger and tragedy on the west coast that Scorsese has captured on the eastern seaboard.

Griffin Dunne has to be the most under-rated American comedian and it is a very good thing his gifts were captured so beautifully in 'After Hours'. His character seems to be the only sane person in Manhattan. He is mostly surrounded a bevy of beautiful and hopelessly neurotic and ruthless women.

Rosanna Arquette, a strange actress all on her own, is cast in a very weird part in this film. Nothing she does makes sense which makes her behavior entirely plausible within the circumstances of her environment. Kafka, the author Dunne's character is reading, sets the tone for this dark and dangerous story. Arquette is perfect as the doomed suicide, a sort of modern grand guignol character. She is also tremendously annoying and it's a relief when her whining person is dispatched in the creepy loft she inhabits with Linda Fiorentino.

There is a fine performance from Linda Fiorentino (whatever happened to her?), as an s/m style dominatrix/artist in SoHo who leads Paul (Dunne) a merry dance through the darkest bowels of the nightclub scene during the "punk" hey-day. Terri Garr, a seemingly sweet and "normal" city girl, a blonde, all-American girl living in a sickeningly sweet and Dada-esquire little apartment. She is the most horrifying of all the women Paul encounters. She struck me as being a potential murderess should Paul have decided to linger longer with her. It was a great relief when he escaped her burgeoning hysteria and ran back into the streets. Verna Bloom's motherly artist caps off Paul's horrible journey by encasing him in plaster of Paris and leaving him in a basement flat fit for Frankenstein's monster.

John Heard is entirely weird and menacing as a soft-spoken but highly-strung bartender, another mass-murderer waiting to blossom looms in the background of his personality.

Scorsese has zeroed in on the familiar things in our lives in a most alarming manner. Cheap bathrooms in cheaply renovated lofts and cramped little apartments. The god- awfulness of the lives of these people is deeply disturbing, and now that I am19 years older than when I first watched this film so avidly, I am not so sure I want to dive back into that vortex of neurasthenia and darkness again.

But I probably will. One of Scorsese's best and definitely his most under-rated film.

Watch at your own risk.

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25 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than you'd expect, 5 January 2005

Author: januaryman from NoVa

Perhaps one of the Scorsese minor masterpieces that sometimes get lost when considering "Goodfellas" or even "Mean Streets," films that get the bulk of the chatter. This, along with "King of Comedy" run in a very different vein, combining black comedy with tension and suspense as a central spine to the piece. Sure, Goodfellas has some black comedic moments, but on whole, it stands as a "drama" rather than a comedy. This is a VERY different film and will cause you to laugh and to shake your head in sympathy and mutter "Oh NO" more than once. I rated it a 9, I have no idea why this got lower marks than that. See it more than once.

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16 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Scorcese's Brilliant Black Comedy, 18 February 2006

Author: dnjjr from NYC

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

N.B. Spoilers within.

This is an underrated, sublimely realized black comedy by the (at the time) struggling Scorcese. There is a perfect balance here between the big picture—-uptown white-collar insurance guy out of his league in night-time bohemian SoHo—-and infinite numbers of details within. Scorcese has taken a great script by Joseph Minion and crafted a piece of comedy, suspense, self-exploration, plenty of twists, and interpersonal discovery. Our lead, Paul Hackett (the subtle and brilliant Griffin Dunne) is the most hapless "hero" to grace the screen in a long time. Whatever can go wrong does go wrong. As Paul steps into the next venture, there is no telling what will come of it. The script keeps the viewer constantly on edge and clueless as to what to expect next. Paranoia becomes rampant.

The music that frames the picture—-a youthful symphony by Mozart—-defines the outwardly tidy guidelines of Paul's world (number crunching and computer interfacing). But even the small glimpse we get of that world says that all is not right. The trainee whom Paul is overseeing (a small part for Bronson Pinchot—-see "True Romance") hates the job and wants out of it. Then there is that telling moment where Paul looks around him and watches everything flow by in its idiosyncratic motion. The quick vision is both sexy and unsettling. He's having a momentary insight, but exactly into what? Is his whole life here empty and pointless? Is he bored out of his mind? Scorcese never lets us know for sure. But then Paul meets Marcy in the diner and the fun begins.

We can't know if Murphy's Law applies to Paul all the time, but it certainly does on this fateful night. There is a flat-out poetic shot of Paul's sole 20-dollar bill floating from the cab into oblivion, and this is just the beginning. This brings up my first observation, though, on Scorcese: his stunning and beautiful camera work. It flows, it jumps, it's liquid, now it interrupts jarringly. The whole effort contributes to the anxious nature of the story and of how Paul never feels completely grounded while he's out of his territory.

The multitudes of characters that Paul meets are all convoluted stories unto themselves. Kiki (a smoking-hot Linda Fiorentino—-where has she gone?), Marcy's artist roommate, and the ultimate 80s bohemian; her leather-bound friend Horst (a menacing Will Patton); the "nice" waitress (Teri Garr) with more baggage than Paul can handle; Gail (the hilarious Catherine O'Hara) who will turn on Paul in a big way; Tom the bartender (John Heard), himself a ticking time-bomb; Cheech and Chong, industrious through the long night, and the solution to who the bad SoHo burglars are; but especially there's Marcy (the luscious Rosanna Arquette). She is sweet, good-hearted, ditsy, but full of dark secrets. A lot of these are spilled, others only suggested. The rape story, for example...hard to understand until you've seen it, but it's full of comedy. Arquette plays Marcy just right, a girl who is just short of being completely unhinged, but who still stumbles ahead smoothly and confidently if not a good bit clueless-ly. This is one unique character. Her suicide contributes much to Paul's emotional weight—-how exactly did he contribute to it?—-and also to the comedy's being so black.

"After Hours" occupies an era that is pre-ATMs and cell phones, but there are Checker cabs, subway tokens, gritty artists' lofts, and rotary phones. Punk is king. The picture strikes me as being linear, yes, but also kaleidoscopic: Paul meets and re-meets the same characters throughout, but each time this happens, his circumstances have taken a new turn. The story is also full of strange details that help knit the whole together. An example: the subject of burns and scars. There is this brief focus on burns and burn treatments. Marcy's cream, her trip to the drugstore to get it, the book of gruesome pictures that Paul can't keep himself from...then Marcy floats back in (he slams the book shut) and what is she holding? A candle with a huge flame! Ha! It's details like these that make the movie feel so integrated. (Even Kiki tells Paul she has "horrible, ugly scars.") Finally, and this part is truly sick, once Marcy is dead under the sheet, Paul can't help but inspect her body for those suspected burn marks. Ugh…

I have to mention the last of Paul's meetings, when there is absolutely nowhere else to turn: June, at the club (Verna Bloom), seems to be the only person who truly understands his predicament and who helps to finally "rescue" him, but her means are highly suspicious. Is she also trying to kill him? What a stroke. One of the key themes of the flick is that everyone Paul encounters is for the moment his savior, but who soon leads him into more trouble than he already has. It is Paul/Upper East Side/trying-his-best versus the nighttime/living-on-the-fly/Downtown mentality, and "After Hours" places the two mindsets at opposite ends of the universe.

Scorcese, temporarily abandoning the beleaguered "Last Temptation," hit the mark spot-on with this wonderful comedy. In the process he proved his love for the medium, not to mention loving all the memorable characters that inhabit the wacky, unpredictable story. I also think this is Griffin Dunne's pinnacle: he perfectly inhabits a role where everything is falling apart around him but where he hangs on and finds something inside that keeps plugging on until the sun rises again. Polished, inspired, funny, and disturbing film making. Highly recommended.

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16 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
All he wants to do is go home, simple huh?, 6 August 1999
Author: AGL Esq from Worcester, England

Such a dark, ironic and uncomfortably funny string of events plus a large helping of bizarre, paranoid and unpredictable characters have never before been forged into one story.

The film follows Paul Hacket (Griffin Dunne) on a date from hell, where from square one it all goes horribly wrong. As we move on, the mood winds up into a frenzied nightmare as this poor mans' plight goes from bad to worse. "All I want to do is go home" he says, running for his life from an angry mob.

The story isn't complex, which you may think could bore, but the characters are so delightfully wacky that you can't help but be transfixed.

We've all had bad days when we've said "Phew! What a nightmare!" - well forget it, until you've taken half the knocks this guy does, you've had but a walk in the park.

Don't just rent this movie - buy it.

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Surrealistic Adventure in Soho After Hours, 11 October 2004

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

While reading the Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in a coffee shop, the bored word processor Paul Hackett (Griffe Dunne) meets Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette), and she gives her phone number to him. Close to midnight, Paul decides to call her and she invites him to visit her in the loft of her friend, the sculptor Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino), in Soho. Paul gets a taxi and loses his money through the open window of the cab. Paul arrives in Kiki's place, where begins his surrealistic adventure along the night.

I do not know how many times I have seen this movie along my life, maybe ten times, but it still attracts me and now I have just seen it for the first time on DVD. I love it and it is one of my favorite cult movies. The surrealistic 'saga' of Paul Hackett trapped in Soho without means to return home is fantastic and fascinate me. The cast, direction, soundtrack and camera are excellent. I believe it is the best role and performance of Griffin Dunne in his career. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): 'Depois de Horas' ('After Hours (literally)')

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A unique experience., 15 July 2007

Author: TOMASBBloodhound from Lincoln, NE USA

To get an understanding of the caliber film we're dealing with, you have to imagine some of the finest elements of other films being wound into a tight 95 minute package and directed by the incomparable Martin Scorsese. After Hours reminds this critic in many ways of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. But somehow it seems to be about the best elements of that film. Our film deals with a mild-mannered Manhattan office worker taking a late night trip to the Soho district to meet up with a beautiful woman he first encountered earlier in the evening. So, much like with Tom Cruise in EWS, we have a protagonist searching for love in a world completely foreign to him. But instead of a never ending and overly talky film, we get a tightly wound and much better paced film from Scorsese. When the film does slow down for conversations, the ones we're treated to are comparable to the best Tarantino ever wrote for any of his films. Fortunately we don't get too many of them, like we would in a Tarantino film, however.

Griffin Dunne plays Paul Hackett, who is bound and determined to hook up with Marcy (Rosanne Arquette) whom he met in a restaurant earlier that evening. Once he makes it to Soho, Paul quickly realizes this spur-of-the-moment rendezvous may have been a terrible idea. Apparently Soho is (or was in 1985) a macabre place full of eccentric artists, bondage enthusiasts, and vigilante mobs made up of mostly gay people. Not only does Paul fail to score with Marcy, he ends up being stranded in the neighborhood with no money to get home, and being blamed for several apartment break-ins by a crowd that wants his blood! Every place or person he turns to for help seems to get him deeper and deeper into danger. There are all kinds of famous or soon to be famous people popping up in little roles here and there. Will Patton as a leather clad bondage enthusiast may be the most odd. Also look for Scorsese in a nightclub sporting a beard and shining a spotlight down on the rowdy patrons.

Unlike many Scorsese films, this one does not rely much at all on violence to get the point of danger across. I believe there is only one violent death, and the victim is not a main character. But in true Scorcese form, the scene produces a laugh! More than anything else, this film has a claustrophobic feeling. It's as if the world is crumbling all around Paul Hackett, and the next door he walks through may be his last. By the final fifteen minutes, he finds himself in the apartment of a gay man he picks on the street. To the man's obvious disappointment, Hackett simply wants someone to tell his story to. Before the scene has any type of logical conclusion, Hackett finds himself back on the street running for his life once again. His momentary attempt at finding compassion shattered in the blink of an eye. The whole film is kind of like that.

After Hours may not be for all tastes, but this critic first saw it back in junior high and never forgot what a treasure it is. 10 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

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21 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
9/10 original and funny, 31 January 2002

Author: The_Wood from slc

Martin Scorsese's After Hours is so unique and interwoven that repeat viewings are almost required. The film is completely over the top in every respect, but that is part of what makes it so compelling. Funny, smart, and imaginative.

Griffin Dunne is brilliant.

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