A office drone (Griffin Dunne) heads to lower Manhattan to meet up with a woman (Rosanna Arquette) he became acquainted with earlier that evening, thus beginning a mericless, Kafkaesque trial of the will where he will be dogged by everyone and everything, from neighborhood watch people to subway workers and cab drivers to various art crowd weirdos and local thiefs. After Hours is a brilliantly constructed and immensely entertaining black comedy from Martin Scorsese, an unlikely candidate to make this kind of picture who delivers with his usual aplomb. It also provides a fine lead vehicle for Griffin Dunne, whose part is a lot trickier than may appear at first glance. While finding myself laughing aloud consistently while revisiting this little gem, I lamented the current state of comedies, where comedic moviemakers take the easy road out with witless, gross-out efforts, and once again marveled at the abilities of one of our finest filmmakers, succeeding admirably in a genre where most directors today fail.
