'After Hours': Martin Scorsese's Wildly Absurdist Tale of Late-Night Chaos in 1980s-Era Lower Manhattan
After Hours (1985) is a deliriously off-kilter black comedy starring Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett, a mild-mannered computer clerk living in New York City. After meeting an alluring young woman named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) one evening, Paul decides to venture downtown for a late-night rendezvous in SoHo. What begins as an impulsive attempt at romance quickly goes awry, leaving Paul stranded downtown as every attempt to make his way home is thwarted by a succession of unforeseen circumstances.
As the night unfolds, Paul is drawn into a series of bizarre encounters with artists, bartenders, punks and assorted neighborhood eccentrics—each new interaction seeming to push him further from reality. His efforts to navigate the mounting confusion are repeatedly thwarted by misunderstandings and bad luck, while a string of thefts in the neighborhood ultimately places him under suspicion. By the early morning hours, Paul’s routine excursion has spiraled into an elaborate nightmare of urban paranoia.
Directed by Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas), After Hours is a wonderfully absurdist tale of social alienation. Dunne is terrific as an ordinary man steadily overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control, while Scorsese transforms downtown Manhattan into an unpredictable maze from which escape seems increasingly impossible. Colorful, increasingly frantic and strikingly outlandish, Scorsese's film is an entertaining portrait of one disastrous night in New York City, where every attempt to regain control only sends its beleaguered protagonist deeper into chaos.
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