Review of After Hours (1985) by Stuart K — 25 Mar 2009

Martin Scorsese's career varied throughout the 1980's, after the huge success of Raging Bull (1980), he had tried for ages to get The Last Temptation of Christ off the ground, but couldn't get the funding, so in the meantime, he took on smaller projects, The King of Comedy (1982), was one of them, and this is another, which is a very underrated film from Scorsese, and one of his only few comedies.

This low-budget comedy has computer word processor Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), who has the most eventful night of his life. He meets Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette) in a cafe, goes over to her place, meets her flatmate Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino), and afterwards, Paul just can't seem to get home, the subway fare has gone up, he's lost all his money, and he ends up being accused of being a burglar by a group of neighbourhood vigilantes.

Coincidences and horrible occurings happen all through the night for Paul, who just wants to go home. The films humour comes out of the bizarreness of the situations, and it's well stages and feels as tight and focused as a stage play.

Scorsese stages the action well, and he should do something like this again, it has some good performances to it's name. Oh, and look out for Cheech and Chong as a couple of wheeler-dealers in a van.

:P.