Film
Review: After Hours
It’s a tragedy to show up at work to give away more of your time when you’ve failed to define yourself the night before.

Martin Scorsese’s After Hours stars Griffin Dunne as Paul, an uptown word processor who’s lived his entire life according to the rules. Naturally, the moment he steps into another section of town (SoHo) at an off hour (per the film’s title), he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of Murphy’s Law scenarios, from a prospective one-night stand (Rosanna Arquette) committing suicide, to repeatedly finding himself a dollar short, to being mistaken for a roving burglar and consequently pursued by an angry mob. Or is it all just a horrible dream and is there something that he can do to end it all?
Scorsese’s mid-‘80s comeback of sorts (it won him a Cannes directing prize) has undeniable energy, thanks to his dependably flamboyant sleeve of speed-freak camera truck shots and Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing slights of hand. Scorsese’s obviously showing off, and this showmanship ends up enhancing the film’s dreamlike sense of encroaching hysteria, such as when Paul visits Julie’s (Teri Garr) apartment and finds her bed surrounded by mousetraps, inexplicably lit with spots like her bed stands at the center of a cabaret atrocity stage.
But Joseph Minion’s script is a relentless excursion into pure sadism, and by the time Catherine O’Hara shows up to become the third blond chick to go psychotic and attempt to destroy Paul’s sense of masculine sexual confidence, many viewers will likely have already cashed in on their empathy and cut their losses. Still, there’s a welcome, insistently radical subtext behind the scenario, a vaguely proletarian-sympathetic attitude (echoes of Brazil) that a faceless, overly-mechanized workplace results in the frazzled, desperate drive to make off-hours (or after-hours) count for all they’re worth. And it’s a tragedy to show up at work to give away more of your time when you’ve failed to define yourself the night before.
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Thomas Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Richard Cheech Marin, Catherine O'Hara Director: Martin Scorsese Screenwriter: Joseph Minion Distributor: Warner Bros. Running Time: 97 min Rating: R Year: 1985 Buy: Video
-
Features23 hours ago
Madonna’s “Vogue”: Through the Years
-
Features7 days ago
The 12 Best True-Crime Docuseries on Netflix
-
Film6 days ago
Prey Review: Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator Prequel Is Starved for Kineticism
-
Film7 days ago
Bullet Train Review: David Leitch’s Elegantly Paced Ride to Neon-Tinged Mayhem
-
Games6 days ago
Stray Review: A Frivolous Cat Simulator Where the Cat Is Almost Beside the Point
-
Video7 days ago
Review: Gordon Parks’s Blaxploitation Classic Shaft on Criterion 4K UHD
-
Video7 days ago
Review: Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal on ClassicFlix Special Edition Blu-ray
-
Video21 hours ago
4K UHD Review: Michael Mann’s Heat Gets Ultimate Collector’s Edition