Fierce People
Director: Griffin Dunne. Screenplay: Dirk Wittenborn, based on his novel. Cinematography: William Rexer. Film editing: Allyson C. Johnson. Production design: Mark Ricker. Music: Nick Laird-Clowes. Producers: Griffin Dunne, Nick Wechsler. With: Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Donald Sutherland, Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Perkins, Paz de la Huerta, Blu Mankuma, Chris Evans, Christopher Shyer, Gary Chalk, Ryan McDonald, Kaleigh Dey, Aaron Brooks, Branden Williams, Teach Grant, Dexter Bell, Dirk Wittenborn, Robert Clarke. USA/Canada. Languages: English/Tagalog. 107 min. 2005.
Our sixteen-year-old hero would rather be researching fierce people in the Amazon rain forest with his scientist dad than scoring cocaine for his dope-addled mom in a rough-and-tumble New York neighborhood. But when he’s busted he winds up in the strangest place of all: a guesthouse on the estate of a filthy-rich gent, who takes him and his mother in so they’ll have a fighting chance of getting their lives back together—a project that starts smoothly, then turns disastrous when violence barges into the privileged domain. This material has promise, but Griffin Dunne’s directorial powers are not at their peak in the oddly scattered story. It fails to catch fire despite the good-faith efforts of an interesting cast and documentary views of the Ishkanani, the tribe being studied by the protagonist’s pop, known far and wide as the Elvis of anthropology. – David Sterritt
