Fierce People Critic Reviews

When the tone goes from daffy to dour in the course of a harrowing plot point, the story becomes more forced than fierce.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

Whenever Sutherland comes on scene, any inadequacies in the film's depiction of the well-to-do become irrelevant.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review