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Customer Review
"'What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses...' Ah well. There are compensations." (last lines)
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2015
In watching Brian De Palma's THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990) it occurred to me that one of the main elements of this story is more relevant today than it was a quarter century ago. In this partial class/race warfare tale, Tom Hanks is passenger in his Mercedes and his mistress, Melanie Griffith severely injures a black youth who has tried to rob Hanks while the two were lost in the South Bronx. Recklessly driving the Mercedes, Griffith runs the young man down, and as he's hospitalized in a state of coma, the NYPD find Hanks, who has been hiding in terror at his Park Ave. apartment.
Bruce Willis, an alcoholic newspaper reporter near the end of his career, writes an inciteful story about Hanks and helps to turn this tragedy into a near race riot. And that is what is all too familiar in recent years: the mindless crowds of protesters, along with looters who take advantage of the moment by burning and stealing everything not nailed down. A bleeding heart media doesn't help matters any. It's all happened far too much.
Also here is an anti-white, money-grubbing attention-whore reverend, whose well-chosen words stir the mob to near-violence. Sounds somewhat like Ferguson, Baltimore and other such unfortunate places in the recent news.
This momentous issue aside, at the time of its release "Bonfire" totally fizzled out. A $47 million budget realized only $15 million in box office sales. In hindsight probably a well-dseserved rejection, but in lieu of recent events, the film shows much prescience.
It's hard to watch this still worthy picture without letting the above considerations affect one's perceptions. But perhaps that's a good thing.
Paranthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 IMDb viewer poll rating.
(5.4) The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) - Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall, Saul Rubinek, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Dunn, Clifton James, Donald Moffatt, Alan King, Richard Libertini, Rita Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Malachy McCourt, Richard Belzer, George Plimpton (uncrediteds: F. Murray Abraham, Geraldo Rivera, Brian De Palma)
Bruce Willis, an alcoholic newspaper reporter near the end of his career, writes an inciteful story about Hanks and helps to turn this tragedy into a near race riot. And that is what is all too familiar in recent years: the mindless crowds of protesters, along with looters who take advantage of the moment by burning and stealing everything not nailed down. A bleeding heart media doesn't help matters any. It's all happened far too much.
Also here is an anti-white, money-grubbing attention-whore reverend, whose well-chosen words stir the mob to near-violence. Sounds somewhat like Ferguson, Baltimore and other such unfortunate places in the recent news.
This momentous issue aside, at the time of its release "Bonfire" totally fizzled out. A $47 million budget realized only $15 million in box office sales. In hindsight probably a well-dseserved rejection, but in lieu of recent events, the film shows much prescience.
It's hard to watch this still worthy picture without letting the above considerations affect one's perceptions. But perhaps that's a good thing.
Paranthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 IMDb viewer poll rating.
(5.4) The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) - Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Kim Cattrall, Saul Rubinek, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Dunn, Clifton James, Donald Moffatt, Alan King, Richard Libertini, Rita Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Malachy McCourt, Richard Belzer, George Plimpton (uncrediteds: F. Murray Abraham, Geraldo Rivera, Brian De Palma)
