After Hours DVD

Take an eventful one-night trip through the bizarre underworld of New York City as a regular guy (Griffin Dunne) is unwittingly thrust into a series of comic misadventures when he loses his cab fare late at night in Manhattan's Soho district. Joseph Minion's tightly constructed script, combined with Martin Scorsese's stylish direction, makes AFTER HOURS a highly entertaining ride that takes the "this night couldn't get any worse" concept to an entirely new level.

A surrealistic black comedy that plays on the paranoia and dread of everyday life in the Big Apple, Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS captures what is easily the worst night of one man's life. Computer programmer Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) makes a casual date with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), a woman he meets in a coffee shop, unaware that it's about to unleash a nightmarish odyssey through the bowels of lower Manhattan. Upon arriving at Marcy's spacious Soho loft, Paul meets her unnerving artist roommate, Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), and the night takes a turn for the worse. Sensing the bad vibes that lie ahead, he immediately decides to return to his home on the Upper East Side. Unfortunately, this isn't such an easy task. In a seemingly endless series of strange and dangerous encounters, Paul begins to fear that he might never make it home again. Working from a clever script by Joseph Minion, Scorsese's film is both hysterical and frightening in its depiction of an insane, neurotic New York City. As the unfortunate hero, Dunne delivers his lines with a baffled incredulousness that also works as a voice for the sympathetic audience, who doesn't know whether to laugh or cringe when things really begin to heat up.

Theatrical release: October 11, 1985. Filmed on location in New York City. AFTER HOURS was director Martin Scorsese's first fiction film not starring Robert De Niro in more than a decade. Look for Scorsese as a light operator in the nightclub scene, focusing the light right on the viewer.

After Hours Reviews:

"...An entertaining tease, with individually arresting sequences that are well acted....Ballhaus's camera takes on an aggressive, willful personality of its own..." -- Vincent Canby, New York Times

"...A must for serious-minded filmgoers....Uniformly vibrant and interesting [actors]..." -- Cart., Variety

"...Sweetly ominous....AFTER HOURS is dazzling movie making....The film is beautifully cast..." -- Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

"Shot speedily at night in guerrilla filmmaking style....[A] wicked black comedy..."-- Mike Clark, USA Today

"[T]he closest thing to an Alberto Sordi comedy in recent American cinema..." -- Tim Lucas, Sight and Sound

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