The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

Image by Warner Bros. via IMDB

Hello friends, happy Wednesday! It's been one week since I started this blog. This post is coming up little late, but it's still technically Wednesday in Los Angeles.

In late 1990 to mid 1991, Bruce Willis had two huge flops. One was Hudson Hawk. The other one was this movie. The same movie that Warner Bros. focused all their attention on, to the detriment of Nothing But Trouble. I'm talking about... The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The Bonfire of the Vanities. Such a cool title! Think about it. It comes from an old Christian practice in Renaissance Italy of burning objects condemned as sinful. The nost famous example being a bonfire on February 7, 1497, by Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola. An awful practice, which destroyed much art, but such a great visual idea. It's where writer Tom Wolfe got the title for his 1987 best-selling novel. That novel was adapted into this movie in 1990.

An illistration on a classical bonfire. Also makes more narritive sense than the movue.

Illumination depicting St. John of Capistrano (ca. 1470) Source

The movie has two of the biggest stars of its day, Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis. Morgan Freeman is in this as well. Brian De Palma, one of my favorite directors, takes the helm with this. He was responsible for many of my favorite movies of the 70s and 80s, including: Sisters, Obsession, The Fury, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables. Critical hits as well as some commercial successes.

And then we come to The Bonfire of the Vanities. A movie I had long heard was one of the "worst of all time." Yeah yeah. It's a De Palma picture with Tom Hanks. How bad can it be? Well, since you asked...

I want to try avoiding going into the plot too much with these reviews, but to understand how the ending doesn't work, you need some spoilers. You have been warned.

The movie stars out strong, with a huge, expensive looking title sequence. You could tell Warner Bros. were thinking, "Yeah, yeah, go all out, this movie will be HUGE!" it's followed by an actual really cool opening scene, a five-and-a-half minute single shot on a Steadicam, showing an intoxicated Bruce Willis show up in a limo at some building and drunkenly stumbles his way to a stage, all while people are trying to talk to him and fix his tuxedo. It's a great scene, expertly shot by operator Larry McConkey. We learn that Willis is a reporter and he's being honored for writing a book. We then go to a scene where Tom Hanks is taking his dog for ad walk. It's a Dachshund, and yes, it is absolutely adorable. I grew up with Dachshunds and they always melt my heart when I see one in a movie.

My buddy has a half-Dachshund named Lita. Half is better than none.

.........

And now I just want to go over to his place and cuddle with his dog

Hanks plays a wall-street guy, the top trader at his investment firm. He is as blue-blood as you can get. Or at least as blue-blooded as Tom Hanks could get. He's still Tom Hanks, even when he's a rich asshole, you can only hate him so much. De Palma, wanted John Lithgow for the role, who would have played it much much better. So the next part in the movie, Hanks is taking the dog for a walk in the rain, which is the cutest thing ever. That dog clearly does not want to go out in the rain. Neither does Hanks, really, because it's all a ruse! It's an excuse to get out of his penthouse and away from his wife, so that he can call his mistress, played by Melanie Griffith. And then it's really all downhill from here out.

Hanks picks up Griffith from the airport and they take a wrong turn and end up in the South Bronx. The inaccuracy in this part of the film is almost hilarious. Immediately upon getting off the freeway and entering the Bronx, they see looting, rioting, street parties, cars being tipped over, trashcans on fire. We're talking, like... 20 feet from the off ramp. It's instantaneous. I know that the Bronx in the 80s, at night, was not the safest place to be in the world. But it wasn't literally Kosovo.

Anyway, while there, they end up almost getting robbed and Griffith runs over a black youth. She and Hanks flee the scene, making this a hit and run incident. Hanks wants to go to the police, but she doesn't for fear that their sin would be exposed to their peers. This makes Hanks, at the very least, an accessory to a hit-and-run. Remember that, it's important.

So as the movie goes along, the police investigate the incident. We are told that the District Attorney (an uncredited F. Murray Abraham) usually convicts minorities, but wants to find a white person to send to prison to help his re-election in a multi-ethnic district. Witnesses say the hit-and-run had Manhattan plates and was a BMW (I think? That or another White Rich Person car). The police begin to investigate and they eventually find out about Tom Hanks. They arrest and charge him with the whole crime. The DA and John Hancock, who plays a Rev. Al Sharpton like character, team up to convince reporter Bruce Willis to write a smear piece on this White Man.

Does this reverse racism make you uncomfortable? Oh, don't worry, it gets worse.

Over the course of the rest of the movie, Hanks loses everything. His wife, mistress, job, house, respect of his peers, all his money. But he "regains his soul" or at least that's the idea. His mistress refuses to come to his aid and admit any wrongdoing. Willis has a change of heart and provides him with an audio recording of Griffith saying that she did it. By the way, Willis is supposed to be an ace investigate reporter, but there are literally just a couple of short scenes of him doing any investigating or reporting.

Yeah, Tom, I felt the same way watching this

Image by Warner Bros. via IMDB

This all brings us to the end of the movie. And oh boy. At this point, I'm not a fan of this film, but I'm not offended by bit. Here we go.

So we find ourselves in the courtroom. The assistant DA has just delivered his final statement. Hanks, sitting at the table, not even in the witness stand, pulls out a tape recorder with Griffith's confession. And he just starts playing it in court. What? I've watched enough LegalEagle to know that's not how introducing evidence works.

But see... not only does the tape have the confession on it... but Hanks has cleverly edited out anything that makes him seem like he did anything wrong. The judge, played by the godly Morgan Freeman, asks him if the tape is his recording . Hanks lies and says that it is. Judge throws out the case, then delivers a sermon to the shocked crowd and District Attorney about how racism is wrong, no matter what your race is.

Let me summarize all that for you.

Tom Hanks plays a snooty, cheating, wall street executive, who commits a crime (accessory to hit-and-run), then proceeds to doctor evidence and lie to a judge to get out of everything.

The movie ends where it began, with Willis talking himself about how Hanks lost everything but regained his soul. But Willis gained everything but lost his own soul. Ugh whatever. Screw you!

Same

Image by Warner Bros. via IMDB

You could say that it was wrong to put ALL of the crime on Hanks' character, sure, but you lose that argument when you remember he DID commit a crime and was still a shitty human being on top of that.

Despite the original intent, this movie is ultimately about a white man using white powers to get what he wants.

But this isn't the case of "it's a good movie with a bad ending" though. The movie just doesn't work. Hanks and Willis are regrettably miscast. The story tries to paint a condemnation of the obsession of the public loving to watch the rich and famous fall. But it's too silly to take seriously. Not darkly satirical, like the novel apparently is. Silly. The Bronx is not a war zone. You can't just pull out a tape recorder in court and say "Look! I'm innocent!" Poor Tom Hanks, his wife, played by Kim Cattrall, leave him because she learns just how much her husband is a piece of garbage. And we're supposed to feel sorry for him?

Sorry I didn't like your movie guys..  but hey! At least I was kinder to Hudson Hawk, right? And I'll do Apollo 13 soon, I promise.

Image by Warner Bros. via IMDB

Not much to say about the making of this one. It was a critical and commercial flop when it was released on December 21, 1990. According to Morgan Freeman and Brian De Palma (Empire magazine #93, December 2008, p.94) apparently no one knew they were making a bad movie at the time. The 1987 Tom Wolfe novel is supposed to be more satirical, focusing on New York's "greed is good" culture of the 80s. But it has the same ending, so I might or might not read it. I watched this

with Wolfe, while doing research for this blog post, and wasn't impressed with what he had to say by the end. There was another book, "The Devil's Candy" by Julie Salamon, released in 1991. It's about the making of the Bonfire movie and, to be honest, I would much rather read that than Wolfe's novel.

One final bit of trivia, a very young Kristen Dunst is in this movie, four years before she freaked out audiences with her role in Interview With a Vampire.

"I came to make peace with you, even though you are the father of lies."

Image by Warner Bros. via IMDB

Final Verdict:

When I posted my ratings explanation in my first blog post, I included "0 out of 5 stars" for a rare few movies. The ones that personally offended me. Well, this was one of them. I actually had this movie in mind when I made that rating option. This is a bad movie. The ending was horrendous and most of the stuff that comes before it is garbage.

I don't recommend this movie. If you want to see it though, you can go to Just Watch to find out where it's streaming.

Three are three types of folks who should see this movie:
1) Completionists. If you HAVE to see everything by De Palma or Hanks or Willis or someone else in this, then watch it.
2) If you're like me, and you feel you can't fully like or dislike a movie you haven't seen, and you feel so compelled, then sure. Watch it. But don't say I didn't warn you.
3) You're a white supremest, looking for that next flawed "example" of "Ha! See! See what THEY do to US?"

A bonfire of the vanities was the term used for the destruction of sinful things. Turns out the only thing that should be thrown into a bonfire is this movie.

Savonarola would have hated this movie. Also, why does this Christian fryar look like a Sith Lord.

Ludwig von Langenmantel: Savonarola Preaching Against Prodigality Source

Have you seen it or read the book? And did you actually like it? Please let me know, I am 100% genuinely curious.

Next time, how about something novel? (Get it, because this movie was based on a book). How about we move away from the early 90s and into the mid 90s, and a movie I might have actually liked. 1994's Mr. Baseball. Is this Tom Selleck movie a home run? Or is it a strike out? Find out on Friday!