After Hours

After Hours (1985)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Griffin Dunne, Patricia Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Verna Bloom, John Heard

From: Geffen

Here's another hot take from me; in a few hours I'll post another review, that one most assuredly less controversial: 

I'd rather see a movie chronicling Linda Fiorentino in real life.

During March, I won't be exclusively seeing foreign films; at times will be ones from America. What a coincidence that shortly after I decided to see this for the first time, there'd be discourse on a familiar stomping ground for me-a movie messageboard-concerning Ms. Fiorentino. There's still plenty of mystery as to why she in essence has vanished from the world of motion pictures in the 21st century; of course there's conjecture that she is “difficult to work with” but only Kevin Smith has directly made that accusation and I am sure the entire topic of “actors or actresses that have the difficult to work with and actresses are the ones punished for that attitude” is a giant can of worms I probably don't want to open. But it is odd that she retired w/ little fanfare oh so long ago. Fair or not I imagine her having a wacky life; an anecdote shared in that aforementioned thread is that about a decade ago she was dating an FBI agent and a past beau was a PI. She created a cockamamie story to FBI agent to get info that she then passed along to her ex's legal team!

While her role in that scandal was more memorable than the one she had here, that is not a stinging criticism as she was fine with the oddball sculptor character she portrayed. Beforehand I presume that my opinion would be typical of the average Letterboxd user. After all, great director, getting to see the Crappy New York City of Old, there's no aversion on my part to seeing a dark comedy. Regrettably, though... after the fastest opening credits in cinematic history, was a whole lot of awkward humor and quite frankly that usually isn't to my tastes. There weren't too many laughs, especially after some horrifying moments and bits of dialogue happened.

If that was not enough of a deterrence to me, I grew to really not like lead character Paul Hackett. Even if this was supposed to take the piss out of Yuppie culture, eventually I just did not care about all the preposterous things going on. Of course, it's been called “surreal” and the direct namedrop of The Wizard of Oz does make that clear. But again, when you don't care... this tale of that yuppie who has a horrible night after meeting a random woman in a coffee shop just did not work for me. No one is more disappointed than me that I can't share in the near unanimous praise of After Hours; however, I do have to be honest here.

To be frank, the main reasons why this has a “meh” rating instead of something lower is mostly due to all the talent & skill involved, including a quality cast full of familiar faces, including Catherine O'Hara at times resembling Jennifer Lawrence, of all people. This being a miss for me is disappointing; however, that won't weigh me down and instead I'll be excited to visit or revisit more of Marty's movies, those I am sure will be more to my tastes.