'After Hours' is a minor Scorcese film, the story of a man who heads out one night on a hot date with a virtual stranger. But he loses his money, the girl turns out to be downright odd and everything soon runs totally out of control. It's a nice conceit, but the plot feels contrived and stretched, while the film is never consistently funny: in fact, it feels more amateurish than any of Scorcese's other works. Arguably, this sort of concept works better when there's a conspiracy involved, as in Fincher's 'The Game': otherwise, the hapless hero is left a victim of outrageously bad luck and his own stupidity. There are entertaining moments, but compared with 'Raging Bull' and 'The King of Comedy', which Scorcese also made around this time, it makes a very poor cousin.
Review of After Hours
