After Hours (1985)

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, Verna Bloom, Robert Plunkett, Bronson Pinchot, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong. [R]

Blackly comic Kafkaesque nightmare situation where fairly mild-mannered data entry specialist Dunne goes out one night to visit a young woman (Arquette) he had just met earlier that day, but after things don’t go as well as he had hoped, he finds—to his increasing frustration and disbelief—that he can’t get home, landing in one bizarre and self-defeating encounter after another. Talk about bad luck! Exaggerated reality never tips all the way into outlandish fantasy (though the timing of certain appearances sometimes feels a tad contrived, especially the van-driving burglars played by Cheech & Chong); Scorsese’s high-style approach never overplays for effect, and makes Dunne’s exasperation feel palpably real, more than his already good performance could do on its own. Because of the intrinsic tension and paranoia that keeps building, the laughter lacks the catharsis of release, but the picture is still quite funny for anyone with a dark side. Lacks a particular what’s-it-all-about attitude regarding lifestyle or setting (the sparsely-populated streets and late-night haunts of Soho), but does it really need one? Discomforting highlights include Fiorentino’s monologue about a lover’s cry (“Surrender, Dorothy!”) and the sight of poor Dunne mummified in papier-mâché. The best of the so-called “yuppie nightmare cycle” films that were released during the height of the Reagan’s America period (see also: Something Wild, Into the Night, Blind Date, etc.). Scripted by Joseph Minion; Dunne also co-produced.

85/100