If ever there was a film that didn't deserve all the bad press it received, this is it. "The Bonfire of the Vanities" is actually an absorbing, slick-paced and well-acted piece of cinema that works on several levels. Tom Hanks is great as Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street hot shot whose life unravels because of one wrong turn into the Bronx. While behind the wheel of McCoy's Mercedes, his mistress accidentally strikes an intimidating young black man who approached the financial wizard. Enter Bruce Willis as Peter Fallow, a reporter eager to regain his reputation who sees the incident as just what the doctor ordered.

"The Bonfire of the Vanities" is a fascinating look at how self interests trump decency, how public perception matters more than the truth, and how lies are sometimes necessary for the truth to surface. One of the reasons this film was so poorly received is that it isn't often laugh-out-loud funny. But "Bonfire" isn't really a comedy; it's a satire about contemporary society, and one that hits all too close to home.

It's been a long time since I read the book or saw the movie, but the casting in this film was all wrong. I saw the trailer on TV, saw the disaster the film might be, but I went to see it anyways and I was very disappointed. Tom Hanks, even before Philadelphia or Forrest Gump or Sleepless in Seattle, played the likable every-man. Hanks' character, Sherman McCoy, is a wall street tycoon, aged 38, with a wife two years older, a daughter he adores, and a young mistress that he insists he deserves all because he is a "master of the universe". In the book, Judy McCoy, Sherman's wife, is described as handsome but matronly at aged 40. Sherman remembers his mother telling him a wife two years older would not make a difference when he was 24 and she was 26, but 20 years later it would, and actually it took only ten years.

But then one night when he is with his mistress, Sherman takes a wrong turn off the freeway into the South Bronx and ends up hitting a black youth with his car because he perceives his life is in danger, and decides to not report the accident to police, to "hit and run". However, he is tracked down and arrested and soon realizes he is not the master of anything compared to the grifters, community leaders, ambulance chasers, and prosecutors who finally have a completely unlikable rich white perp and a poor black victim.

The novel was wonderful and nuanced. The movie is obvious and almost farcical. Hanks is too likable to play any of the characters in this film, I had Bruce Willis pictured as Sherman McCoy more than the drunken yellow journalist, and Kim Cattrell, who plays Sherman's wife, doesn't look like the matronly 40 year old and barely tolerated wife of anybody in 1990. Only Morgan Freeman as the judge rings remotely true. I'd pass on this one if I were you, but for sure read the book. After the 2008 crash and the banksters walking away without a scratch, Sherman McCoy seems more real than ever.

When "The Bonfire of the Vanities" came out at the end of 1990, it was slammed by the critics, and "went up in smoke" at the box office. Maybe some people thought that it was trying to capitalize on what "Wall Street" showed a few years earlier.

When I saw it several years later, I thought that it was quite well done. Like "Wall Street", it does show the decadence, cynicism, and greed inherent in the lives of rich New Yorkers. But this one has sort of a comedic tone. It portrays stock broker Sherman McCoy's (Tom Hanks) self-serving lifestyle getting thrown into flux when his mistress Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith) accidentally runs over a young African-American. This incident ignites people's emotions all over the board, which may be the title's implication: Sherman's vain existence is crashing down, and he's getting exposed to groups whom he had never even considered earlier.

Personally, I couldn't understand why the critics and public didn't like this movie (considering that we made the kitschy "Home Alone" a hit around the same time, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for ignoring "TBOTV"). It looks at the various problems with our society: greed, racism, and yellow journalism. Bruce Willis, whom I usually find obnoxious, does a really good job here as reporter Peter Fallow, out to make a few bucks by blowing the story up as much as possible. There's also a character based on Rev. Al Sharpton.

All in all, this is a move worth seeing. It's definitive proof that Brian DePalma was a lot better before he got all Hollywood with "Mission: Impossible", "Snake Eyes", etc. Also starring Morgan Freeman, a very young Kirsten Dunst, and several people (among them F. Murray Abraham and Andre Gregory) in small roles. Watch for Malachy McCourt (the brother of "Angela's Ashes" author Frank McCourt) as the doorman.

And yes, I once thought that the title was something like "Vampire of the Bonnies". You know, just one of those mispronunciations when you're really young.