The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1990 American satirical black comedy movies directed and produced by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, and Kim Cattrall. The screenplay, written by Michael Cristofer, was adapted from the best-selling 1987 novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. 1
Plot
Sherman McCoy sees his life unravel when his mistress Maria Ruskin hits a black boy with his car. When yellow journalist Peter Fallow enflames public opinion with a series of distorted tabloid articles on the accident, the case is seized upon by opportunists like Reverend Bacon and mayoral candidate D.A. Abe Weiss. 2
Controversy
As McCoy rides through the Bronx with his mistress, she cries out that the poor black natives are animals. Such a shocking statement. But as De Palma has presented them, they are animals, all of them, an ignorant, hungry, criminal pack of wolves. De Palma tries to make up for these racist attitudes by presenting Morgan Freeman as Judge White, the moral standard in the movies. Unluckily, he succeeds only in furthering the conception of Freeman as the safest black man in Hollywood. Judge White is part of a judicial system that he clearly knows doesn`t work and that most members of his community see as oppressive. However, he has arbitrarily been declared free of corruption, and he is given the job of presenting the movie`s moral, as his speech:
What is justice? Justice is the law. . . . It`s decency . . . what your grandmother taught you. Needless to say, this boy scout moralizing undercuts any real sharp social criticism Bonfire can offer. 3
Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities_(film) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099165/ https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-12-28-9004170359-story.html