After Hours

1985 Comedy Drama

Martin Scorsese's After Hours is a dark, tragi-comic tale of a fish out of water, centering on an uptight, white-bread computer consultant from uptown Manhattan who finds himself in the nightmarish and incomprehensible (to him) world of Soho after dark. The ordeal begins when Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) gets lonely and decides to leave the posh East Side and search the Soho streets for some loving from Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), the pretty young woman he met in a downtown cafe. He has her phone number and works up the nerve to call. She wants to see him, and so Paul grabs $20, hails a taxi and sets out. The weirdness begins when he loses his money during the high-speed cab ride. His visit to Marcy's loft, where he meets her crazed artist roommate Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), is a disaster, as is his encounter with the beehive-wearing retro waitress Julie (Teri Garr). more..

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Griffin Dunne,Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr

Reviews

  • After Hours is a brilliant film that is so original, so particular, that we are uncertain from moment to moment exactly how to respond to it. The style of the film creates, in us, the same feeling that the events in the film create in the hero. Interesting.

    Roger Ebert - The Chicago Sun-Times

    29 November 2012

  • This unpredictable and hilarious paranoid fantasy is a contemporary, urban "Wizard of Oz," peopled by punk artists and Yuppie vigilantes instead of wicked witches and Munchkins.

    Julie Salamon - The Wall Street Journal

    29 November 2012

  • A wickedly funny black comedy that follows the increasingly bizarre series of events that befall hapless word-processer Griffin Dunne after he ventures out of his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and goes downtown in search of carnal pleasures.

    - TV Guide

    29 November 2012

  • Martin Scorsese's take on NYC puts a hip spin on Joe Minion's cleverly constructed nightmare.

    - Empire

    29 November 2012

  • Martin Scorsese transforms a debilitating convention of 80s comedy--absurd underreaction to increasingly bizarre and threatening situations--into a rich, wincingly funny metaphysical farce. A lonely computer programmer is lured from the workday security of midtown Manhattan to an expressionistic late-night SoHo by the vague promise of casual sex with a mysterious blond.

    Dave Kehr - Chicago Reader

    29 November 2012

Awards

  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role

    BAFTA Awards (1987)

     
  • Martin Scorsese

    Cannes Film Festival (1986)

  • Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy

    Casting Society of America (1986)

     
  • Best Foreign Film (Meilleur film étranger)

    César Awards, France (1987)

     
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical

    Golden Globes (1986)