Flick of The Day: After Hours

Many great directors have oddities in their back catalogue, films that don't feel like their by the same director, that don't sit amongst the director's body of work. 1941 has long stood out on Steven Spielberg's list (a Comedy!) while Ridley Scott directed Thelma & Louise and Tim Burton's ill fated Planet of the Apes remake does not immediately seem like something you would expect him to create. Often these films stand out because they are of a lower quality than the rest of the director's work but sometimes there is a decent film there that just feels out of character. For Martin Scorsese, his 1985 dark comedy After Hours is such a film. This is perhaps because of the circumstance which surround its creation. A film which the great director very much fell into when his take on the The Last Temptation of Christ was cancelled by the studio just days before he was due to begin shooting, it is borne out of his need to make something and is all the better for it.

After Hours

Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, is a jobbing word processor who after a long day at the office bumps into a quirky and pretty girl named Marcy in a New York cafe. Later he decides to venture out of his upper east side apartment in search of Marcy and her SoHo residence. So begins a nightmarish journey to the dark side of the city. After a manic taxi ride during which he loses all his money to a gust of wind, he arrives at Marcy's  down at heel part of town only to find that there is little chemistry and Marcy is at best a little odd. Marcy lives with an equally eccentric character, a sculptor named Kiki played by Linda Fiorentino. Paul decides to flee the apartment and heads for home on the subway, or rather he would have but for his shortage of funds. Facing a walk home in the teeming rain, he makes for an empty dive bar where the bartender, played by John Heard offers to spot him the train fare if he goes to his apartment to set his burglary alarm. Of course, Paul is mistaken for a thief and is soon being pursued by a murderous mob of vigilantes. Paul is soon running for his life and his night goes from bad to worse as a series of increasingly bizarre events conspire to stop him from getting home.

While the events of Paul's night in SoHo are decidedly bizarre, they always feel plausible and knit together with a veneer of truth. This credibility is necessary to keep the viewer engaged as things go from bad to worse. The character of Paul himself bares each new event with a charm that would be beyond most people and gives him an endearing quality which carries the film to its end.

This kind of dark black comedy is not something which Scorsese would be known for and it would be hard to imagine him making such a film today. That said, the film is replete with the kind of visual displays of talent for which he has long been famed. At one point a set of keys are thrown to Paul from a height, Scorsese shows us this from the point of view of the keys plummeting toward Paul. It is at all times a stylish movie, the director knows his surroundings well and does his best to show this part of the city off. This is New York during the dark days of the 1980's before the mayorship of Rudy Giuliani sought to clean the streets of crime and grime. This is a film very much of its time. The noir elements suit the mood of the film and heighten the feeling of a journey into the unknown for the relative Milquetoast that is Griffin Dunne's Paul.

While Martin Scorsese would go on to bigger and better things, there is much to enjoy in this mid career character piece. It captures both a time and a place which have come to be culturally significant since the film was made. The story, bizarre as it is never feels like an elaborate con job on the audience and if anything holds its own in the manner of many bar tales that begin, "You won't believe what happened to me last night...".

Flick of The Day: Cutter's Way

In contrast to some of the ground breaking films of the 1970s that we have looked at thus far such as Jaws, The French Connection and Blue Collar, the 1980's were very much a step back for the New Hollywood movement. Directors like Friedkin, Coppola and Cimino that had soared so high in the '70s one by one foundered on the rocks of the studio system. Indeed Michael Cimino managed to make a film so stupefyingly dull and expensive that it brought down a whole studio. So it was that the 1980s became a decade of studios playing it safe with a string of sequels and action pictures. There were exceptions of course, and today's film was one of them, Cutter's Way.

Cutter's Way

Set in the Californian community of Santa Barbara, one of America's wealthiest enclaves set between the mountains and the sea, Cutter's Way is a tale of damaged people, murder and despair in the sunshine. Three old friends live together on the margins of this beach community, disaffected and bitter at the fact that they are on the outside. Richard Bone, wonderfully played by Jeff Bridges, is an ageing gigolo gradually coming to the realisation that his looks won't keep him employed forever. Maureen Cutter, an alcoholic who is sticking by her husband Alex despite the fact that he is slowly stripping away her dignity. Alex Cutter, in a career best performance from John Heard, is a crippled Vietnam  vet who wallows in whiskey and self loathing. 

One night while driving home in the rain, Bone's ageing car breaks down in a alleyway. As he sits wondering what to do, a car pulls into the alley and a man gets out, depositing something in a bin before speeding off. As Bone walks home in the rain, we see a women's foot hanging out of the bin. The next morning the police turn up at his door, a young woman has been murdered. Bone relates his tale to the police and is released. He meets up with his friends Alex and Maureen and as Bone tells them the story, a parade passes by. One of the local grandees, JJ Cord is taking part and as he rides by on a horse, Bone suddenly realises that he is the man he saw in the rain. He quickly tells Alex and together they begin to investigate Cord, with Bone a reluctant participant at first. They band together with Valerie, who is the sister of the murdered woman, and plot to blackmail Cord with the intention of turning him in if he pays up. Of course, not all is at it seems, and until the final scene of the film, you are unsure whether Cord is a guilty man or an innocent man being blackmailed.

Alex becomes obsessed with proving that Cord is guilty as much out of bitterness as catching a killer. The film moves slowly toward a thrilling conclusion but it is as much a character study of a group of people who have been damaged by how their lives have turned out and now exist on the margins of society.

"I don't drink. You know, the routine grind drives me to drink. Tragedy, I take straight"

Cutter rages at the world around him often without any real target, Bone is disaffected and seemingly unwilling to commit to anything, preferring to drift. Maureen is perhaps the most beaten down of three, resigned to her fate. All three make interesting studies and are an interesting counterpoint to the go-go 80's characters in other films of this era. It is hard to believe that Gordon Gekko exists in the same decade as these people.

Overall, this is a great film, driven by some very strong performances particularly from John Heard with a fine script. It is worth seeing if only for Heard's performance, though it has a great story which will keep you thinking after the credit's roll.