Fierce People
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Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.0 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 9 Ratings

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  • Starring: Anton Yelchin, Diane Lane, Donald Sutherland
  • Summary: When 16-year-old Finn is caught buying cocaine for his junkie but well intentioned mother Liz, his plans of spending the summer away from NYC with his anthropologist father studying the Ishkanani in the jungle are abruptly changed. In an attempt to get both of their lives back on track, Liz moves the two of them out to a cottage on the country estate of her sugar daddy, Mr. Osborne. Finn immediately makes his way into the 'tribe' of wealthy country clubbers that inhabit his new home. Soon Finn is dating Mr. Osborne’s granddaughter Maya and has found a best friend in her brother Bryce. Finn adjusts quickly to their life of fancy clothes, cars, horses, sex and drugs. Liz begins attending AA meetings and begins to establish herself as a loving mother working to correct her mistakes and win back Finn's love and trust. Unfortunately things begin to spiral out of control, and he begins to see that the wealth and friendships bestowed upon him come at a price. (Lions Gate)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 15
  3. Negative: 1 out of 15
  1. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    75
    Director Griffin Dunne's adaptation of Dirk Wittenborn's fiercely personal novel ambles pleasantly through coming-of-age movie territory, then takes a jarring Agatha Christie detour.
  2. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    60
    When F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked that the rich “are different from you and me,” he might have been thinking of someone like the moody billionaire from Fierce People.
  3. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Tasha Robinson
    50
    The idea that rich people are an alien tribe is just one of many that get lost in Wittenborn’s distracted script. Instead of exploring the concept, he throws out random incidents until he hits one that sends the film into a dark, grotesque spiral.
  4. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Steve Winn
    25
    Plays like a movie that some teenage boy cooked up in his chemistry lab. 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.

See all 15 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. KevinJ.
    8
    Donald Sutherland is so perfect for this role...he embodies every fantasy of wealth gone wild. he makes the movie, with Diane Lane.
  2. ChadS.
    7
    In the absence of a father, Liz Earl(Diane Lane) finds a father figure for her son Finn(Anton Yelchin); a man with no balls, literally; the masseuse's benefactor has no balls. While dad studies the Ishkanani tribe in South America, Finn conducts his own field study of a different sort of "Fierce People", upper-crust people, who kill and f*** in the deepest recesses of New Jersey. Ogden C. Osbourne(Donald Sutherland) has no testicles, but if you're the seventh richest man in the United States, you don't need balls in your sac to f*** over a tandem of interlopers whose summer-long hobnobbing with the rich almost gets them killed. Unlike "The Nanny Diaries", "Fierce People" uses anthropology as a visual and thematic motif throughout the film's entire running time, and its surprisingly effective, especially when the story grows unexpectedly dark in tone. If you're familiar with non-westernized cultures, Ogden's dumbstick and scrotum that signifies nothing is a matriarchal reversal of the female genitalia mutilation practice that primitive males force upon their women in the bush(Ogden's ex-wife had given the okay to snip-snip). Interestingly, Ogden's sexual agency is transferred to his granddaughter Maya(Kristen Stewart), who seduces Finn in a rites-of-passage ceremony that involves candles and warpaint. A secondary male puts a stop to their formalized consummation, because had Finn impregnated Maya, it would've been harder for the tribe to eject this low woman and her unworthy son from their midst.… Expand

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