This is a truly terrible film about politics/ethics. I can only advise you to read the book, and not let the badness of this film to turn you off it. The film manages to take every nuanced and insightful moment in the book by Tom Wolfe (which was not without flaws) into a banally cynical statement which assumes that the viewer is dumber than a bag of hammers. What made the book interesting is that it did not have a pat ending. The film manages to have a couple.
The cinematography is in fact amazing, but who cares, since this is the only thing going for a film filled with yuck. There are bad performances by everyone, as a result of bad writing and bad direction, since Brain De Palma was either entirely blind to the overacting going on constantly in the frame or actively encouraging the actors to be as broad as possible so as to drive home the utterly juvenile and excruciatingly clumsy observations of his satiric portrait. Considering the uneven (at best) quality of his work overall, one tends to think he ruined the possibility of Wolfe's insight into New York in the 80's, America, and human affairs in general from ever being shared with a larger audience than those who enjoy reading.
The cinematography is in fact amazing, but who cares, since this is the only thing going for a film filled with yuck. There are bad performances by everyone, as a result of bad writing and bad direction, since Brain De Palma was either entirely blind to the overacting going on constantly in the frame or actively encouraging the actors to be as broad as possible so as to drive home the utterly juvenile and excruciatingly clumsy observations of his satiric portrait. Considering the uneven (at best) quality of his work overall, one tends to think he ruined the possibility of Wolfe's insight into New York in the 80's, America, and human affairs in general from ever being shared with a larger audience than those who enjoy reading.