The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	120:15
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (85:12)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Brian De Palma
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Tom Hanks Bruce Willis Melanie Griffith Morgan Freeman
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$24.95	Music	Dave Grusin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, to a minor extent
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This, I understand, is supposed to be a parable of the times (circa 1980s) and is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Tom Wolfe. Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks) is a "Wall Street Master of the Universe", a hugely successful and fantastically wealthy young Wall Street deal maker who has the unhappy privilege of being married to, well, a bimbo of socialite proportions (Kim Cattrall). Presumably as a form of escape he keeps a mistress on the side, an even sillier woman named Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith) who happens to be married to another wealthy, though much older, gentleman. Sherman seems quite capable of managing the whole complicated mess, until one evening while whisking Maria from the airport to her private love nest, he misses his turnoff and ends up driving his Mercedes Benz through the Bronx. Of course he ends up in a nasty situation with some of the local lads, whence Maria runs one of them down, putting him into hospital in a coma. The very nervous couple flee the scene, trusting that that will be the end of the matter.

    Unfortunately for them a local black community religious leader (John Hancock) sees this as an ideal opportunity to get some money, not to mention some great publicity, out of either the local hospital or the unidentified rich white man. Likewise, the Mayor (F. Murray Abraham in a role he obviously thought so highly of, he remains uncredited) can see the prospect of votes in an election year by pursuing the owner of the hit and run Mercedes, and sets all his staff onto tracking down and exposing him.

    Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis), an archetypal drunken, burnt-out journo, gets dragged in to turn the whole sorry mess into a media circus, and before long the truth and even the victim are forgotten as it turns into a case of the world (read that as Vested Interests) against Sherman McCoy. He loses his job, his wife, his mistress and almost his freedom until the last instant when, in one of the compulsory Hollywood court scenes, he is able to turn the tables on Maria. In doing so, as the proverb goes, he regains his soul, while everyone around him loses theirs. Should have been a great little package.

    Morgan Freeman playing the judge and Donald Moffat playing Sherman's father add some weight to the cast.

    I came to this film well aware of the caning it got at the hands of the critics, but without any prejudices against it. In fact, given the cast, I was actually disposed to enjoy it. In the event I found the first 30 minutes simply boring, and the characters of little or no interest. Obviously, this is fatal in a story that holds itself out as a parable since, frankly, I just didn't care. To be fair, Tom Hanks provided his usual high quality performance, but Bruce Willis' role saw him play little more than a boozy and hung over character, and the rest of the cast (except for Freeman and Moffat) are so shallow they simply pass across the screen without leaving any real mark.

    Happily, my interest level did rise throughout the film, but it was a bit of an up-and-down affair. I suppose one feature was the marvellous way in which Maria strangles the English language. Sherman's revenge also raised a smile.

    It might be worthwhile to note that this film was nominated for five Razzie Awards, in the categories of Worst Actress (Melanie Griffith), Worst Director, Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay (Michael Cristofer) and Worst Supporting Actress (Kim Cattrall). Need I say any more?

Video

    My first concern with the transfer surfaced almost immediately, with the opening credits being quite grainy and ill-defined. Unfortunately this characteristic seemed to pop up throughout the whole film and resulted in a less than sharp image. Don't get me wrong - the picture is eminently watchable, but I do wonder what caused the graininess. Shadow detail also was only of average quality, and tended to lend the whole picture a slightly dark quality. There was no low level noise observed.

    The film doesn't offer any great opportunities for grand colour schemes but what is provided is realistic and well rendered.

    I found no compression artefacts at any stage, and some minor aliasing patterns only appeared in some of the fine costuming detail. Scratches and marks were a greater problem, and posed a minor, though constant, distraction throughout the entire film's length. The disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change nicely positioned within a fade-to-black scene transition at 85:12 between Chapters 24 and 25.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue is universally clear and easy to understand. While audio is in sync with the image, this should certainly not be taken to mean that the substantial amount of looping has produced a realistic effect. In fact, most of the dialogue in the opening scenes resembles a performance of a very inexperienced pop singer lip syncing to someone else's vocals. This problem thankfully didn't last, but I was really holding out for Tom Hanks, whose experience ensured he always sounded natural.

    The music score by Dave Grusin is satisfactory without contributing much to Western culture. It emphasized woodwind instruments - the clowns of the orchestra - in a light-hearted way just to remind us that we shouldn't be taking this too seriously.

    The surround channels and subwoofer didn't really add much to the experience, although the former did enough to lift the audio out of two dimensions.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

• Pan & Scan version

    I like to see pan & scan versions as an option on disc because I think that is healthy for the growth of the format. However in this case the PAL version is my preference.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall