After his mistress runs over a young teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight and attracts the interest of a down-and-out reporter.After his mistress runs over a young teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight and attracts the interest of a down-and-out reporter.After his mistress runs over a young teen, a Wall Street hotshot sees his life unravel in the spotlight and attracts the interest of a down-and-out reporter.
- Awards
- 1 win & 5 nominations
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe 330-second Steadicam shot of Peter Fallow arriving at the Palm Court of the Winter Garden was a tour de force for operator Larry McConkey. He had to track backwards, get on a golf cart, ride it for 380 feet, get off of it, track backwards 234 feet, get into the elevator, get out, and track for another 250 feet.
- GoofsWhen McCoy gets off the subway, he is riding the number 1 train and he gets off at 77th Street station. The number 1 train runs on the West Side of Manhattan, nowhere near his Park Avenue residence on the East Side, and there are no 77th Street stops on the number 1 line.
- Quotes
Judge Leonard White: [to court room] Racist? You dare call me racist? Well I say unto you, what does it matter the color of a man's skin if witnesses perjure themselves. If a prosecutor enlists the perjurers. When a district attorney throws a man to the mob for political gain, and men of the cloth, men of God, take the prime cuts? Is that justice?
Judge Leonard White: I don't hear you...
Judge Leonard White: Let me tell you what justice is. Justice is the law, and the law is man's feeble attempt to set down the principles of decency. Decency! And decency is not a deal. It isn't an angle, or a contract, or a hustle! Decency... decency is what your grandmother taught you. It's in your bones! Now you go home. Go home and be decent people. Be decent.
- SoundtracksPennies From Heaven
Written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston
Tom Hanks plays self-styled 'master of the universe' Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street broker who enjoys every material comfort that life can offer, living in his huge apartment with his ditsy wife Judy (Kim Cattrall). During an eventful night with his mistress Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith), they take a wrong turn while heading back to her apartment and end up in South Bronx. Sherman gets out of the car to clear the road when he is approach by two black youths, and a misunderstanding leads to Ruskin accidentally running one of them over. They flee the scene, but once the story of a rich white man almost killing a poor black kid breaks, the likes of Reverend Bacon (John Hancock), a Harlem religious and political leader, Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham) and hard-drinking journalist Peter Fallow (Bruce Willis) rear their heads to twist the ongoing s**t-storm to their own benefit.
Despite some nice tracking shots and sets that really do capture the tacky glamour of the 80's, the movie's biggest downfall is the casting. The two leads, Hanks and Willis, are woefully miscast. McCoy is a loathsome character, a WASP-ish high-roller in an increasingly capitalist country, but Hanks is one of the most likable actors around. He looks visibly uncomfortable in a thinly- written role, and only takes control of his character in a scene in which he clears his apartment by unloading a shotgun played mainly for laughs, which at this stage of his career was Hanks's shtick. Fallow in the novel is a manipulative con-man, twisting the unravelling story through his newspaper in order to keep his job and make a nice paycheck along the way. But De Palma only seems to have picked up on his heavy drinking, meaning that Willis swings a bottle around and narrates the story, playing the role of spoon-feeder without playing an active role in story or convincing as someone who could get to his position.
But then again, De Palma's movie doesn't exist in the real world. Arguably, the ensemble of characters in Wolfe's novel were caricatures, but they were well-rounded characters, and being inside their heads meant that we could understand their motives, something the movie entirely ignores. So we get the likes of Bacon, Weiss, lawyer Tom Killian (Kevin Dunn) and Assistant District Attorney Kramer (Saul Rubinek), all key players in the novel, reduced to scowling or bumbling onlookers, while McCoy squirms for our amusement and Fallow tells us what we're supposed to be thinking. Occasionally its an all-out pantomime, which would be forgivable it was funny or insightful. Yet when Wolfe calls for pantomime at the climax, the movie delivers a ridiculous speech spoken by Judge White (Morgan Freeman), informing us that decency is what your grandmother taught you.
www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
- tomgillespie2002
- Apr 12, 2015
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Вогнище марнославства
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $47,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $15,691,192
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $4,216,063
- Dec 25, 1990
- Gross worldwide
- $15,691,192
- Runtime2 hours 5 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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