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Fierce People

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Fierce People (2007)

24%
29%
69%
N/A
N/A
N/A
24 %
Reviews Counted: 42 Fresh: 10  Rotten:32 Average Rating: 4.7/10
 
Consensus: Fierce People's premise of a teenager studying rich people like animals is grating and self-satisfied, and Anton Yelchin's smug performance makes the film even harder to agree with.
 

How does the Tomatometer work?

The Tomatometer measures the percentage of positive reviews from Approved Tomatometer Critics for a certain movie.[-]

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for language, drug use, sexuality/nudity and some violence.

Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins

Theatrical Release: Sep 7, 2007 Limited

Synopsis: A coming-of-age story about the perils of privilege, Lions Gate Films’ FIERCE PEOPLE examines the deceit and betrayal that erupts when a working-class mother and her son move to a wealthy “country club” suburb where social climbing is a blood sport. Starring Oscar ® nominee Diane Lane... A coming-of-age story about the perils of privilege, Lions Gate Films’ FIERCE PEOPLE examines the deceit and betrayal that erupts when a working-class mother and her son move to a wealthy “country club” suburb where social climbing is a blood sport. Starring Oscar ® nominee Diane Lane (UNFAITHFUL, UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN), Donald Sutherland (COLD MOUNTAIN, THE ITALIAN JOB) and Anton Yelchin (HEARTS IN ATLANTIS), FIERCE PEOPLE is directed by Griffin Dunne and written by Dirk Wittenborn, who adapted the screenplay from his novel. Trapped in his mother’s Lower East Side apartment, sixteen-year-old Finn (Anton Yelchin) wants nothing more than to escape New York and spend the summer in South America studying the Iskanani Indians, or “Fierce People,” with the anthropologist father he’s never met. But Finn’s dreams are shattered when he is arrested in a desperate effort to help his drug-dependent mother, Liz (Diane Lane), who scrapes by working as a masseuse. Determined to get their lives back on track, Liz moves the two of them into a guesthouse on the vast country estate of her ex-client, the aging aristocratic billionaire, Ogden C. Osbourne (Donald Sutherland). In Osbourne’s close world of privilege and power, Finn and Liz encounter a tribe fiercer and more mysterious than anything they might find in the South American jungle: the super rich. While Liz battles her substance abuse and struggles to win back her son’s love and trust, Finn falls in love with Osbourne’s beautiful granddaughter, Maya (Kristin Stewart), befriends her charismatic older brother, Bryce (Chris Evans), and even wins the favor of Osbourne himself. But when a shocking act of violence shatters Finn’s ascension within the Osbourne clan, the golden promises of this lush world quickly sour. And both Finn and Liz, caught in a harrowing struggle for their dignity, discover that membership always comes at a price… Contrasting the mores of high society with the blunt savagery of primitive tribes, FIERCE PEOPLE takes an inside look at the upper classes, examining the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of good manners. Sporting a biting wit, and featuring charismatic performances from Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland, this unflinching drama exposes the trappings of wealth and privilege, and their overwhelming power to both seduce and corrupt. --© Lionsgate [More]

Genre: Dramas

Starring: Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Donald Sutherland, Kristen Stewart, Christopher Shyer

Director: Griffin Dunne
Screenwriter: Dirk Wittenborn
Producer: Nick Wechsler, Keith Addis
Composer: Nick Laird-Clowes

DVD Info

Release:

Feb 5, 2008

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Keep Case
  • Widescreen

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
  • Dolby Digital 2.0 - English
  • Subtitled - English, Spanish

Additional Release Material:

  • Audio Commentary - Griffin Dunne - Director
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Featurette - "Breaking Down the Tribe"

Buy It On DVD

Reviews

 
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Ratings Image
N/A

divine performances from Lane and Sutherland

Full Review | comment Comment
04/19/08
Clint Morris
Moviehole
Ratings Image
1.5/4

...the movie's abrupt (and downright graceless) transformation from jaunty comedy to heavy-handed drama strips the proceedings of any momentum it may have had...

Full Review | comment Comment
02/22/08
David Nusair
Reel Film Reviews
Ratings Image
D

With a screechingly affected voice (think Nicholson mixed with a sick Chihuahua), Yelchin is all tiring, syllable-pulling raw nerve here; a blinding pitch that holds the film back from needed dramatic expression.

Full Review | comment Comment
01/30/08
Brian Orndorf
DVDTalk.com
Ratings Image
N/A

Director Griffin Dunne, working from Dirk Wittenborn's adaptation of his own novel, pounds away at the analogy between the inherent cruelty of the tribal rituals of the Iskanani and those of the well-heeled.

Full Review | comment Comment
12/03/07
Joshua Katzman
Chicago Reader
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
B-

On balance, it's a movie worth seeing with its artistic inserts, appropriate soundtrack and organic performances.

Full Review | comment Comment
11/24/07
Jennifer Preyss
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
2.5/5

Watching the idle rich toy with people can only go so far, then you want more depth and this doesn't have it.

Full Review | comment Comment
10/12/07
Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone
TheMovieChicks.com
Ratings Image
1/5

Miscalculated at every level, it's a vacant drama full of ineptly drawn characters.

Full Review | comment Comment
10/10/07
Geoff Berkshire
Metromix.com
Ratings Image
2/4

There are lots of potent things floating around in it -- sexual initiation, drugs, fantasy-land wealth, brute violence, primitive rituals, Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland -- but the mix just sits there without producing any notable reactions.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
Steven Winn
San Francisco Chronicle
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Ratings Image
2/4

Rarely has self-pity become so monotonous so quickly.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
John Hartl
Seattle Times
Ratings Image
2.5/4

A buoyant coming-of-age adventure welded to an amiable wealth fantasy.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
Bruce Westbrook
Houston Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
2/4

After a promising start, Griffin Dunne's film bogs down and simply turns into a predictable mish-mash of a movie that is shrill and heavy-handed and totally trite.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
Bill Stamets
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
D

Desperate, manipulative.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
Mary F. Pols
Contra Costa Times
Ratings Image
2/4

The film is way too banal to raise any questions of its own. [Director] Dunne, for his part, doesn't conjure up any kind of inspired visual atmosphere or compelling psychological tension. Nothing is as funny, touching, true, or sad as it should be.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/21/07
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image
B-

Dunne's messy, unpredictable, yet weirdly vital movie veers from one extreme to another without finding a consistent tone, but Sutherland never strikes a wrong note.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/20/07
Nathan Rabin
Onion AV Club
Ratings Image
C

Fierce People is no ordinary dud. This seedy soap opera is the most outlandish, campy romp through the mud since Showgirls.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/20/07
Bill White
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ratings Image
2/4

The laughs suddenly cease after a brutal rape sequence, and Dunne desperately and vainly tries to re-work the remainder of the movie as a metaphysical coming-of-age story.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/20/07
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
Ratings Image
2/4

The idea that rich people are an alien tribe is just one of many that get lost in Wittenborn’s distracted script.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/20/07
Tasha Robinson
Chicago Tribune
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Ratings Image
N/A

Overplotting and a particularly ugly turn make this adaptation of Dirk Wittenborn's novel less a meditation on how the rich are different than a bland coming-of-age procedural.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/20/07
Ann Hornaday
Washington Post
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Ratings Image
2/5

There is little in life sadder to see than a film that thinks it has a great deal to say of a revelatory or profound nature, but doesn't

Full Review | comment Comment
09/19/07
Andrea Chase
Killer Movie Reviews
Ratings Image
1.5/5

Griffin Dunne and Dirk Wittenborn think they’re pretty clever.

Full Review | comment Comment
09/15/07
Chad Greene
Boxoffice Magazine
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Related Forums

(2007 release)-Griffin Dunne's FIERCE PEOPLE is now set to open on Sept, 7th!!!
by: ReelReviewer.com 9/13/07


Showing in Chicago on Sept 21!
by: filmforlife 9/13/07


Check out the Brand new trailer
by: celebslides 9/5/07


(2007 release)-Griffin Dunne's FIERCE PEOPLE may finally hit theaters this August???
by: ReelReviewer.com 7/8/07


REEL_REVIEWER
the 4th Annual TRIBECA film festival shines the SPOTLIGHT on FIERCE PEOPLE!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 4/13/06
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