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Fierce People
Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 15
  3. Negative: 1 out of 15
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  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. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    The film is worthwhile primarily for the fun, breezy first hour. After that, it's a case of watching to find out how things turn out.
  3. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    70
    Whereas most of the injustices suffered by "Nanny's" nanny are of the skin-deep variety, the hopelessly reductive Fierce People ups the ante.
  4. Variety
    Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
    70
    Whenever Sutherland comes on scene, any inadequacies in the film's depiction of the well-to-do become irrelevant.
  5. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    67
    Fierce People's first hour is dominated by brittle social satire, but in its third act, the film takes a jarring turn toward tremblingly sincere melodrama it can't pull off.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    50
    What might have read as a dense allegory comparing the rituals of the super-rich with the tribal customs of the violent Ishkanani tribe in the Amazon becomes a tedious, over-ripe soap opera on screen.
  9. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    50
    Not even the always reliable Diane Lane can save this one.
  10. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    50
    The platitudes in this gratuitously sentimental movie are taken a lot more seriously than the people.
  11. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Bill White
    50
    Fierce People is no ordinary dud. This seedy soap opera is the most outlandish, campy romp through the mud since "Showgirls."
  12. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Robert Abele
    50
    Dunne and Wittenborn, who adapted his book, work too hard at stressing just how ruthless the unspoken standards of the stinking rich can be, leading to a story-pivoting act of brutality toward Finn that careens the movie into a tonal wilderness that it never recovers from.
  13. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    50
    When the tone goes from daffy to dour in the course of a harrowing plot point, the story becomes more forced than fierce.
  14. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Joshua Katzman
    50
    Never recovers from a jarring and improbable act of ritualized violence that occurs halfway through the film.
  15. 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.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 6 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. 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.… Full Review »
  2. 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.
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