People who saw Anton Yelchin in “House of D” a few years ago may find it hard to take him seriously in “Fierce People,” where he once again plays a good-natured, frustrated teenager mooning over his first crush while supporting a substance-addicted mother. In “Fierce People,” his humor is snarkier and his focus on losing his virginity is more pronounced, but he could still be the same character in a different setting. Certainly Yelchin’s exasperated nasal whine hasn’t changed in the interim.
Dirk Wittenborn scripted this screen adaptation of his 2002 novel “Fierce People,” the coming-of-age story of New York adolescent Finn Earl (Yelchin). Essentially a good kid with bad timing, Finn gets busted buying coke for his junkie masseuse mother (Diane Lane) just before he’s due to leave for a summer in South America with his anthropologist father. Guilt-stricken over his arrest, his mother persuades billionaire client Ogden C. Osborne (Donald Sutherland) to support them both while she kicks her habit. Sulking over his canceled sojourn among the fierce Ishkanani, Finn decides to make an anthropological study of Osborne’s eccentric rich family, and of the New Jersey suburb they rule as American royalty.
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. Initially a wry comedy full of Finn’s analysis of his world, the film suddenly becomes a mystery with an obvious solution, obscured only by the presence of some hallucinatory Ishkanani who run around the Jersey woods being pointedly symbolic.
“Fierce People” deals in intriguing micro-details — the way Osborne has a servant dip his Oreos in milk, or the similarly calculated rituals of his grandchildren, Maya and Bryce. But the puzzle pieces don’t form any big picture; the thriller aspect falls flat, the analysis of the rich is pat and shallow, and while the film begins as a character study of Finn, his voiceover narration stops revealing his thoughts just at the point when they might have become interesting. Completed in 2004, “Fierce People” languished unreleased for nearly three years, apparently because of a studio debate over how to market it. It’s no wonder that was difficult; it’s hard to imagine selling this muddle as anything but “‘House Of D,’ but stranger.”
‘Fierce People’ **
Directed by Griffin Dunne; screenplay by Dirk Wittenborn; photographed by William Rexer; edited by Allyson C. Johnson; production design by Mark Ricker; produced by Nick Wechsler and Dunne. A Lionsgate release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:47.
Finn Earl … Anton Yelchin
Liz Earl … Diane Lane
Ogden … Donald Sutherland
Maya … Kristen Stewart
Bryce … Chris Evans
MPAA rating: R (for language, drug use, sexuality/nudity and some violence).
**** EXCELLENT
*** GOOD
** FAIR
* POOR
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