Synopsis
Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman.
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Cast
- Griffin DunnePaul Hackett
- Rosanna ArquetteMarcy
- Linda FiorentinoKiki
- Teri GarrJulie
- John HeardTom the Bartender
- Tommy ChongPepe
- Cheech MarinNeil
- Catherine O'HaraGail
- Will PattonHorst
- Verna BloomJune
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
After Hours is a brilliant film that is so original, so particular, that we are uncertain from moment to moment exactly how to respond to it. The style of the film creates, in us, the same feeling that the events in the film create in the hero. Interesting. - 100
TV Guide Magazine
A wickedly funny black comedy that follows the increasingly bizarre series of events that befall hapless word-processer Griffin Dunne after he ventures out of his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and goes downtown in search of carnal pleasures. - 100
Chicago Reader
Martin Scorsese transforms a debilitating convention of 80s comedy--absurd underreaction to increasingly bizarre and threatening situations--into a rich, wincingly funny metaphysical farce. A lonely computer programmer is lured from the workday security of midtown Manhattan to an expressionistic late-night SoHo by the vague promise of casual sex with a mysterious blond. - 100
Empire
Martin Scorsese’s take on NYC puts a hip spin on Joe Minion’s cleverly constructed nightmare. - 100
Wall Street Journal
This unpredictable and hilarious paranoid fantasy is a contemporary, urban "Wizard of Oz," peopled by punk artists and Yuppie vigilantes instead of wicked witches and Munchkins. [5 Sep 1985, p.1] - 91
The A.V. Club
After Hours is a caffeinated black comedy with an emphasis on speed. With a small crew and a tight shooting schedule, Scorsese transformed limited means into a staccato burst of creative energy, playing up the extreme paranoia and frustration of a data processor stranded in Soho. - 80
Variety
The cinema of paranoia and persecution reaches an apogee in After Hours, a nightmarish black comedy from Martin Scorsese. Anxiety-ridden picture would have been pretty funny if it didn't play like a confirmation of everyone's worst fears about contemporary urban life. - 60
The New York Times
After Hours is not, ultimately, a satisfying film, but it's often vigorously unsettling.
