Perfect flawless black comedy with humor as dark as the night that caught Paul Hacket (Griffin Dunne), a nice guy, an everyman, an ordinary computer operator in its darkness and surrounded him by all kinds of weird strangers who very well could be the deadly creatures of night that inhabited SOHO of early 1980s every night after hours... or perhaps they are still there? If ever a brilliant film was made about a worst nightmare come true, After Hours it is. This movie seems so different from what we've come to associate with Martin Scorsese but it is undeniably his film. It takes place in NYC, and its dark scary streets come directly from Scorsese's earlier masterpieces, "Mean Streets" (the streets after hours are even meaner, are they not?) and "Taxi Driver", the horrifying descend to the real Inferno.<br /><br />Amy Robinson, the film producer calls After Hours "dark, funny, paranoid New York summer movie" - and it says it all. This movie makes me think how great it would be if Scorsese turned to comedies (not the Hollywood brainless light romantic comedies but "dark, funny, paranoid" type) more often. I have to mention writing which is absolutely brilliant, considering that it was the first work by Joseph Minion. Roger Ebert, who recently has included After Hours to his list of Great movies, mentions that Minion's teacher, the Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev, gave the script an "A." Having seen Makavejev's infamous Sweet Movie, I am not at all surprised. I also want to mention the camera work by Michael Ballhaus, the German cinematographer who has made fabulous in their beauty films with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It seems to me that Scorsese might have seen Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant because both films share the claustrophobic and suffocating atmosphere which was captured amazingly by Ballhaus. After their first work together on After Hours, Scorsese and Ballhause would make The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006).<br /><br />The journey through the worst night ever by Paul brought to mind another surreal journey, one of my all time favorites, "O Lucky Man" by Lindsay Anderson. After Hours is in the same league for me. In both films, the nice guys take a trip that would turn brutal, bizarre, dangerous yet irresistibly funny. Mick Travis wanted to succeed in life while Paul Hacket only wanted some fun night and perhaps to get close to a beautiful woman he'd met earlier (Rosanna Arquette). Instead, he would encounter a trio of mysterious and dangerous women who seduce, mystify, and horrify him (Linda Fiorentino, Terri Garr, and Catherine O'Hara). And I don't even mention all crazy male characters. After Hours does not get mentioned among Scorsese's most remarkable and memorable films but it is. Even if it takes place in the 80s, it is timeless; it does not lose any of its dark nocturnal power. It is a great work of the master who has been always passionate about cinema. Scorsese made After Hours when he was forced to stop working on "The Last Temptation of Christ" and was depressed, frustrated, and uncertain if he would ever return to it. Scorsese told his friend Mary Pat Kelly. "My idea then was to pull back, and not to become hysterical and try to kill people. So the trick then was to try to do something." Scorsese later confessed that working on After Hours gave him back his love for making movies. The members of the jury in Cannes Festival were certainly mesmerized with Scorsese's inspiring directing. They awarded him with the Best Director Prize in 1986. If ever any director deserved it, it was Martin Scorsese for the marvel which After Hours is.<br /><br />10/10