AFTER HOURS
A film review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Martin Scorsese Writer: Joseph Minion Starring: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, Linda Fiorentino, Verna Bloom, Tommy Chong, Cheech Marin, Will Patton, Bronson Pinchot
"After Hours" is the most bizarre black comedy anyone will ever see. Simply stated. This film is so bizarre that not only is it absolutely hysterical to watch, but it's also tense and frightening and one could probably benefit from a small break halfway through the film just to collect yourself. I mean, one can only take so much of Kafka and Freud being presented at the same time.
Written by a film student and directed with darkly comic flair by Martin Scorsese (A True God Among Men), "After Hours" is a kafkaesque nightmare of a movie, starting out as a little unusual date movie and turning into a wild multi-leveled nightmare. Our hero, Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne, at his best), is a typical computer programmer in New York who hates his job, flicks channels all night, and goes to coffee shops to read George Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" with hopes of meeting a female. This particular night it happens with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) who sees him reading Miller and makes some wild, sexually fierocious comments on the book. Paul is immeadiately turned on and gets her number.
He calls her that night and discovers she's living with some artist named Kiki Dees (a young Linda Fiorentino, working on her "Last Seduction" role early) in Soho (Let me just say that after watching this movie I will NEVER step foot in Soho). He goes there, experiences some very bizarre situations, gets to know her better and then ditches her because: a) she's weird and more importantly: b) she might just have some burn scars all over her body.
The film, which has started off as a date film, has slowly become bizarre and, well, kafkaesque (a counter, please, for the number of times I say that word in this review alone). But even though it has been weird so far, it's nothing as for what will happen next. Paul's life is turned into a nightmare by associating with other people in an attempt of trying to get back to his apartment (see, the subway tolls have gone up and he only has about 90-some cents on him). Among the people he meets are: a bartender (John Heard), who's seen so much that he doesn't even stare a bit when two men come into his bar and make out; a waitress (Teri Gaar), who's such a loser that it's unexplainable; and a pair of burglars who just happen to be played by none other than Cheech and Chong (great casting, if I might say).
This might just be a stupid everything-bad-happens film but it's so well written and so brilliantly directed by Scorsese that it seems to have several dimensions: on the surface, it's a wicked comedy; beneath, it has Freudian undertones (most of the problems he gets into are sex-related in some way...and the end is, well, incestuous, but I won't divulge) and, well, Kafka undertones as well (no need to explain this). It all projects Scorsese's view of New York as a kind of Dante's Inferno, with everybody seeming to be losers just waiting around for whatever and actually being so bored that it might be fun to form a mob and chase an innocent man through the streets of Soho.
Besides, this has Scorsese written all over it: the music playing slowly and drearily; the amazing slow takes; the dry wit and black humor; etc, etc, etc. But, unlike many of his other films, I believe "After Hours" to stand on the same level as his other masterpieces (Which are? Glad you asked: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas"), presenting Scorsese's talent with comedy; his non-traditional way of presenting a story with flair and style and making a full dimensional work of art out of it. But if you really don't care about these things, you'll still have a great time with this brilliantly funny film.
MY RATING (out of 5): *****
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews