The Bonfire of the vanities

Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s tome to political corruption and greed in New York City was an unmitigated disaster for the filmmaker and all involved. Playing against type, Tom Hanks was cast as Sherman McCoy, a slick Wall Street trader, who immersed in the high-pressure world of stocks and bonds, enjoys reaping the financial rewards of his job. But Sherman’s Achilles heel is his extramarital affair with Maria Ruskin, a buxom Southern belle, who amuses Sherman with her uneducated speech, but reveals a ruthless streak when she runs over a black teenager in Harlem and Sherman is sent to trial. It is drunken reporter Peter Fallow who uncovers the scandal, despite misgivings about the motivations of the players who help him. Unfortunately, encapsulating the many strains of Wolfe’s novel proved too complex for the script, which leaves many characters as ciphers and fails to flesh out the motivations of the central players. Nevertheless, within the context of the extravagant, tasteless excesses of the 1980s, the film serves as an intriguing tableau of corruptibility, vice, greed and human foibles.
Cast includes: Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall, Morgan Freeman, F. Murray Abraham