Paul Hackett, a bored Manhattan word processor, takes a chance on a woman he meets in a diner and heads downtown to SoHo for what looks like a low-stakes date.
Within an hour his money blows out a taxi window, his apartment keys go missing, and every stranger he meets makes his night worse instead of better. Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Joseph Minion turn a single sleepless night into a closed loop of bad luck.
Scorsese made After Hours on a four-million-dollar budget, shot across forty nights in SoHo, right after Paramount pulled the plug on his long-planned The Last Temptation of Christ just before production was due to start. Rather than wait out that collapse, he took on this much smaller script fast, working with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and editor Thelma Schoonmaker to shape a lean, anxious 97-minute cut.
The film works because Scorsese treats Paul's mounting humiliations with the visual language of a thriller rather than a farce, using close, distorting angles and quick cuts to keep the audience as disoriented and cornered as its lead. Griffin Dunne plays Paul with a mounting, sweaty desperation that never tips into cartoon panic. It is one of the tensest comedies of its decade, the laughs arriving defensively as the night tightens, and it won Scorsese the Best Director award at Cannes in 1986.
After Hours has held on as a cult favorite of downtown-1980s New York filmmaking rather than a mainstream staple, so it rewards seeking out over stumbling across. Check your PLOT watchlist for current availability before pressing play. At 97 minutes it's a compact watch for a night when a tense, funny, slightly nightmarish trip through lower Manhattan sounds appealing.
