After Hours

Composite Score: 83.93

Starring: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Tommy Chong, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Cheech Marin, Catherine O’Hara, Dick Miller, and Will Patton

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: Joseph Minion

Genres: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Thriller

MPAA Rating: R

Box Office: $10.61 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                After Hours is Martin Scorsese’s dark comedy about a word processor who has the worst night of his life trying to make it back to his apartment from a date-gone-south in SoHo. It follows the increasingly intense and unbelievably connected experiences of Paul Hackett, played by Griffin Dunne, after he meets a girl named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) at a café after work and gets her number. His ever-escalating series of misadventures makes for an excellent dark comedy when paired with Scorsese’s directorial style and a soundtrack full of creative needle-drops. The film goes the extra mile by offering some social commentary on the state of the “modern” office employee and their dreams and fantasies. It is considered one of Scorsese’s more underappreciated films, but his love for New York and his frantic pacing and character work come through brilliantly anyway.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                The biggest issue with After Hours has more to do with its protagonist’s attitude rather than that of the filmmakers or the film itself. Virtually every female character in this film gets portrayed in emasculating fashion – Marcy’s rejection of Paul’s advances, Kiki’s whole dominatrix vibe, Julie’s rat traps surrounding her bed, Gail’s commandeering of her telephone, and even June’s sculpting of Paul. They all work to demean or intimidate Paul, painting a rather negative picture of the relationship between men and women in the world. Of course, this is meant as a critique of the dehumanizing nature of the mundane workplace and the way Paul’s experience at his office has skewed his relationships with others, but a viewer could easily make a less generous interpretation and leave thinking that Scorsese and Minion and probably most people involved in making the film want them to hate women and fear their emasculating effect on men – not the ideal takeaway.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                After Hours is an incredibly fun descent into the improbable. Scorsese does a great job utilizing his camerawork to enhance the film’s pace, giving the whole thing a nightmarish otherworldliness – which really helps get the audience into Paul’s shoes. The lighting and set design makes the rundown areas of NYC where most of the film takes place feel entirely outside of the real world, complete with characters with motivations and actions that feel entirely alien to both Paul and the viewer. It is a film that sets out with the goal of creating a setting that keeps the audience on edge with a story and situations so ridiculous that they don’t fall entirely over it into the realm of psychedelic horror. Scorsese’s requisite tragic irony does wonders for the film, keeping things light enough to not lose the audience (or Paul) to a feeling of utter despair, leaving them with a hope that things might somehow still go Paul’s way – that there’s no way the universe can be this unexpectedly cruel forever.

                Martin Scorsese is the perfect director for After Hours, bringing all of his cinematographic skill and passion for stories about businessmen and high-stress situations to bear in a quick, heart-racing thriller that certainly earns its place among the greats. It’s important to not get too caught up in the protagonist’s mindset, particularly regarding women, but instead to remember that the film is meant to be social criticism of his very way of life. This film is currently streaming on HBO Max if you’d like to check it out sometime soon.