Martin Scorsese’s 1985 film After Hours recently turned 40, standing out as perhaps his most quietly influential work from the 1980s. Unlike other decade-defining Scorsese movies such as Raging Bull or The Last Temptation of Christ, this dark comedy diverges sharply from his usual crime dramas, providing a distinctive tone and narrative that quietly reverberates through many later films. Set in New York City‘s SoHo district, the movie follows an everyday office worker thrust into a surreal and nightmarish urban labyrinth, exposing a world both unsettling and filled with bizarre encounters.
As the focus of the analysis, Martin Scorsese After Hours highlights the director’s willingness to explore unconventional storytelling, balancing humor with an undercurrent of menace, as the protagonist confronts a series of escalating, chaotic mishaps over the course of one night.
Unconventional Casting and a Different New York City Perspective
Unlike the majority of Scorsese’s films, which often feature major stars like Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Daniel Day-Lewis, After Hours employs a cast of strong but less iconic actors. Griffin Dunne stars as Paul Hackett, a computer worker caught in a spiraling, surreal ordeal after a date in SoHo. Supporting roles filled by actors such as Teri Garr, Linda Fiorentino, Rosanna Arquette, Bronson Pinchot, Catherine O’Hara, and the comedy duo Cheech & Chong enrich the story with quirky and memorable performances.
This ensemble reflects a scrappier, more offbeat version of New York City than Scorsese’s typically gritty urban landscapes. Instead of high-stakes crime or intense drama, the film depicts a night of increasingly strange and inexplicable events fueled by downtown eccentricities and social anxieties unique to the mid-1980s.
A Nightmare New York City Tale with Kafkaesque Overtones
The plot follows Paul Hackett’s misadventures as he loses his money, struggles to find a cab or subway fare, and continually stumbles into bizarre and threatening situations. Rather than a traditional crime thriller or mystery, the film creates a cycle of escalating predicaments that feel both irrational and unavoidable, evoking a Kafkaesque nightmare where the urban environment itself seems antagonistic.
Scorsese plays with noir conventions, but replaces them with an unpredictable, surreal mood. Paul is not trapped in a criminal underworld or a grand conspiracy; instead, he wanders through encounters that seem random yet persistently hostile. This approach highlights a dark comedy lurking beneath the surface of seemingly absurd scenarios.
Legacy and Its Influence on Later Films Centered on Nighttime Urban Adventure
After Hours redefined the “one night gone wrong” movie structure, influencing numerous films that followed. Comedies such as Adventures in Babysitting and its later remake The Sitter adopted similar themes of mishaps spiraling out of control, though with less peril. The group-based comedy Game Night borrows this late-night exploration of hidden dangers, shifting the format to interaction among friends but echoing the original’s concept of the ordinary turned chaotic.
More recent films like Under the Silver Lake and Good Time incorporate crime elements, adding explicit danger but drawing on Scorsese’s precedent of immersing protagonists in an enigmatic cityscape fraught with dark humor. Additionally, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, while adopting a different emotional angle, reflects tonal similarities in merging farcical comedy with underlying tension and the possibility of swift tonal shifts.
Connections to Other Works and Continued Cultural Resonance
The influence of After Hours extends beyond plot or tone. Griffin Dunne’s later role in the 1998 film Caught Stealing, where he portrays a Lower East Side bar owner named Paul, deliberately echoes his character from Scorsese’s film, suggesting an evolution from a corporate office worker to an ingrained figure of downtown life. Though set years later, the continued exploration of the offbeat New York experience maintains thematic ties to After Hours.
Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest also shares some sensibilities, channeling a similarly chaotic portrayal of Manhattan, albeit reversing some narrative directions and exploring class dynamics through a wealthy mogul’s journey from his Brooklyn penthouse to the Bronx. These examples highlight how Scorsese’s work has helped shape a cinematic understanding of New York City as a place where social and cultural contrasts collide in unpredictable ways.
Distinct Absence of Familiar Scorsese Elements and Its Punk Rock Energy
After Hours lacks many typical Scorsese features, including the presence of his frequent collaborators like De Niro or DiCaprio. It comes between two other contrasting Scorsese films, the urban drama The Color of Money and the religious epic The Last Temptation of Christ. Nevertheless, it connects well with later films such as Nicolas Cage’s Bringing Out the Dead, which also portrays a frenetic, difficult New York City experience during overnight paramedic shifts in the early 1990s.
More than a simple comedic detour, After Hours resonates as an embodiment of a punk rock attitude infused with urban anxiety, offering a vision of New York that is simultaneously bizarre, threatening, and oddly familiar. Its legacy continues to inform how filmmakers portray the city’s underbelly, far removed from sanitized or stereotypical cinematic representations.
“It’s just cyclical nightmare logic everywhere he turns, a world too comically unruly to offer him typical narrative structure.” – Jesse Hassenger, Writer
“After Hours may be the closest Scorsese ever came to punk rock.” – Jesse Hassenger, Writer
