After Hours

After Hours is a wild film with a fairly simple plot. A man calls up a woman he met earlier at a coffee shop to ask her on a last minute date. She invites him to her apartment. Things get weird and he quickly leaves. He soon realizes he doesn’t have enough money to get back home and what started out as an impromptu date quickly turns into the longest night of his life.

Griffin Dunne plays the lead role of Paul Hackett, a man who desperately wants to get home. Dune excellently portrays the manic, sleep deprived Paul. He uses his body language to convey the constant tension and restlessness that Paul feels throughout the night. His blood shot eyes give the look of a man with little sleep and little answers. You can hear his voice get increasingly higher as Paul becomes more and more irritated.

After Hours is a dark comedy. Director Martin Scorsese has crafted his own 1980’s New York style fantasy adventure story in the vein of The Wondeful Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Paul finding himself in a strange land not knowing how to get back from where he came. Scorsese slowly hypnotizes you, fully engrossing you in Paul’s never ending nightmare. He makes you think minutes have turned into hours and hours have turned into days. This movie is a prime example of nothing good ever happening after midnight.

4 out of 5 stars

1985 R, 1h 38min