Movie Review: After Hours (1985)

★★★★★

After Hours is such a wild ride. I had no idea where it was going next, and that made it even better. Weird in the best way — I loved it.

Michelle C.

Nebraska

Some nights spiral out of control. After Hours is about one of those nights, but under Martin Scorsese’s direction, it’s not just a bad evening, it’s a Kafka-meets-Looney Tunes descent into urban chaos.

Rewatching it for BoxReview.com, I realized how different After Hours feels from Scorsese’s better-known films. There are no gangsters, no rock stars, no sweeping historical arcs. Instead, we follow one ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation that just keeps getting stranger, scene after scene.

The Premise: The City After Midnight

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a word processor, a job so dull that by 9 PM, he’s desperate for something, anything, to break the monotony. That “something” arrives in the form of a conversation with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) at a coffee shop. She gives him her number, and soon he’s on his way to SoHo to meet her.

From there, things go sideways fast. A lost cab fare, bizarre encounters, a stolen bag of money, a dead body, and an increasingly hostile neighborhood all conspire to keep Paul from getting home. It’s less a plot than a chain reaction of mishaps, each more absurd than the last.

Griffin Dunne: The Everyman in Freefall

Dunne’s performance is the key to why After Hours works. He doesn’t play Paul as a hero or a victim, just an average guy trying to navigate a series of increasingly unhinged situations. His mix of politeness, desperation, and mounting panic makes you root for him even as you laugh at his misfortune.

Something most reviews skip over is how passive Paul is. He rarely makes decisive moves; instead, things happen to him. This gives the film a dreamlike quality, as though he’s trapped in a loop he can’t control.

The Supporting Cast: A Parade of New York Eccentrics

One of the joys of After Hours is its revolving door of memorable side characters:

• Rosanna Arquette as the mysterious, possibly unstable Marcy, whose shifting moods set the tone for the night.

• Linda Fiorentino as Kiki, a sculptor whose plaster-of-Paris work becomes an oddly important plot point.

• Teri Garr as Julie, a waitress with 60s beehive hair and a fixation on Paul.

• Cheech & Chong as a pair of thieves who are both a threat and a bizarre source of comic relief.

Each interaction is like a short film in itself, with its own rhythm and weirdness.

The Real Star: 1980s SoHo

While many films romanticize New York, After Hours captures the city at its most intimidating and surreal. This isn’t the bustling daytime Manhattan of Working Girl or the gritty gangster playground of Mean Streets. It’s late-night SoHo in the 80s, deserted streets, odd pockets of life, and a sense that the normal rules don’t apply after midnight.

What’s fascinating is how Scorsese uses architecture and lighting to make the city feel like a trap. Narrow hallways, locked doors, endless staircases, every location seems designed to keep Paul from escaping.

The Humor: Anxiety as Comedy

Scorsese once described After Hours as a “black comedy of manners,” and that’s exactly right. The film is funny, but the laughs are often nervous ones. Situations escalate not through slapstick but through social awkwardness. Paul can’t bring himself to be rude, even when it would save him, and that politeness keeps landing him in trouble.

One scene that perfectly captures this is when Paul tries to explain himself to a group of angry neighbors, only to get tangled in his own words until they’re convinced he’s a criminal. It’s a slow-motion cringe spiral, and it’s brilliant.

Cinematography and Pacing

Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography deserves more credit than it usually gets. The camera is constantly moving, tracking Paul’s journey through a labyrinth of late-night New York. Close-ups feel claustrophobic, while wide shots emphasize how empty and alien the streets are.

The pacing is relentless, there’s barely a moment for Paul or the audience to breathe. Just when you think the night’s madness has peaked, something new drops into his path.

Underappreciated Themes

While the surface is pure absurdity, After Hours has a few deeper threads:

• Control (or the lack of it): Paul starts the night thinking he’s making choices, but quickly realizes he’s at the mercy of others.

• Urban alienation: Even in a city of millions, Paul can’t find anyone to help him without strings attached.

• The absurdity of social rules: Half of Paul’s problems come from trying to be polite in situations where politeness is useless.

It’s a story about how quickly a “normal” life can unravel when dropped into the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Ending: Full Circle

Without spoiling too much, the film’s ending is one of my favorites in Scorsese’s filmography. It brings Paul right back to where he started — but after a night like that, the return feels almost surreal. It’s the perfect cap to a movie that’s more about the journey (and the frustration) than the destination.

Why After Hours Still Works Today

The film’s brand of humor, uncomfortable, escalating, and rooted in social mishaps, feels surprisingly modern. It’s easy to imagine Paul’s night as a viral “worst date ever” Twitter thread in 2025.

It’s also a reminder that Scorsese’s range goes far beyond the crime genre. He can do suspense, comedy, and surrealism without losing his command of pacing and character.

Final Thoughts

After Hours is a gem in Scorsese’s catalog, a small, strange, perfectly paced dark comedy that captures both the energy and the menace of New York after dark. It’s a movie for anyone who’s ever had “one of those nights” where nothing goes right, except here, the city itself seems to be in on the joke.

If you’ve only seen Scorsese’s big, loud classics, give After Hours a try. Just maybe don’t watch it right before heading out for a late-night adventure.