The Bonfire of the Vanities (film)
From AwardAnnals
| Film: | The Bonfire of the Vanities |
|---|---|
| Director: | Brian De Palma |
| Genres: | |
| Distributor: | Warner Home Video |
| Find it: |
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Handle with care—this one’s a bomb! Director Brian De Palma seemed an unlikely choice to transfer Tom Wolfe’s mammoth bestseller—a vibrantly satiric story about race, politics, and greed in 1980s New York—to the screen. In this case, the first impression was correct. Made with a tin ear to everything that made the book so real, the movie gets it wrong every time, starting with casting Tom Hanks in the central role (which, as anyone with brains knew, should have been played by William Hurt). Move along to the choice of Bruce Willis for the sneaky British tabloid journalist and, well, need I say more? As stylish as any De Palma film, this story of a Wall Street broker whose extramarital shenanigans trigger a racial incident that becomes front-page news gets no help from Michael Cristofer’s tone-deaf script. After watching it, read Julie Salomon’s behind-the-scenes book about its making, The Devil’s Candy, which is much more entertaining. —Marshall Fine
Related works
Tom Wolfe’s modern American satire tells the story of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street “Master of the Universe” who has it all—a Park Avenue apartment, a job that brings wealth, power and prestige, a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress.
Suddenly, one wrong turn makes it all go wrong, and Sherman spirals downward in a sudden fall from grace that sucks him into the ravenous heart of a New York City gone mad during the go-go, racially turbulent, socially hilarious 1980s.
