 Fierce People
a.k.a. “Oi Agroikoi,” “Días salvajes”
MPAA Rating:
 for language, drug use, sexuality/nudity and some violence_____
Moviemaking Quality:
_____
Primary Audience:
Adults
Genre:
Drama
Length:
1 hr. 47 min.
Year of Release:
2006
USA Release:
November 30, 2007 / DVD release: February 5, 2008
“Every family tree has its nuts.” Producer’s Synopsis: “Trapped in his mother’s Lower East Side apartment, sixteen-year-old Finn (Anton Yelchin) wants nothing more than to escape New York and spend the summer in South America studying the Iskanani Indians, or ‘Fierce People,’ with the anthropologist father he’s never met. But Finn’s dreams are shattered when he is arrested in a desperate effort to help his drug-dependent mother, Liz (Diane Lane), who scrapes by working as a masseuse. Determined to get their lives back on track, Liz moves the two of them into a guesthouse on the vast country estate of her ex-client, the aging aristocratic billionaire, Ogden C. Osbourne (Donald Sutherland). In Osbourne’s close world of privilege and power, Finn and Liz encounter a tribe fiercer and more mysterious than anything they might find in the South American jungle: the super rich. While Liz battles her substance abuse and struggles to win back her son’s love and trust, Finn falls in love with Osbourne’s beautiful granddaughter, Maya (Kristin Stewart), befriends her charismatic older brother, Bryce (Chris Evans), and even wins the favor of Osbourne himself. But when a shocking act of violence shatters Finn’s ascension within the Osbourne clan, the golden promises of this lush world quickly sour. And both Finn and Liz, caught in a harrowing struggle for their dignity, discover that membership always comes at a price…
Volunteer reviewer needed for this movie — Request this assignment See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers.   Movie Critics
“…As ‘Fierce People’ nervously skitters between documentary scenes of the Ishkanani and the story of a mother and son absorbing the tribal customs of the New Jersey gentry, your instinct is throw up your hands and shout, ‘Enough already; we get it!’…” “…if the film has one major, tragic flaw, it is in the casting of Yelchin, who, with his urchin, ringleted prettiness and grating, sandpapery voice, plays Finn as if he’d seen too much of the early oeuvre of Christian Slater. It’s an overly calculated performance—now adolescent wise-ass, now wounded, wronged faun—which subverts any real, identifiable poignancy in his character’s situation.…” “…Though the mystery does work, it also feels thrown in from another movie.…” Neutral - I would not recommend this movie for very young children. Fourteen or over at least due to the well deserved 'R' rating. The movie was about a young teenage boy and his single mom. It constantly contrasted the two societies of upper class America to the Iskanini tribe in South Africa, a very primitive tribe which means 'Fierce People.' The movie was loaded with the 'F' word, sex scenes and implications with not a lot of real nudity (backs of women, backs of men, frontal nudity of a male, no genitals). The nudity was mainly with the ancient primitive tribe in South America which wore little clothing and they were in their normal habitat.
There were scenes of people taking drugs. The Lord's name was taken in vain 4 or 5 times. The answer to many problems seemed to be to have sex. In one scene, a young girl had found out she was pregnant, the boy's reponse was to have sex with her behind his girlfriend's back.
The most social redeeming element gotten from the movie was when it was mentioned in a film clip the people in the movie were watching. It was said that 'Children are very important to the Iskanini Tribe in South America. Divorce and remarriage and second familes are taboo.'
This reminded me of the passage from the Bible, which implies all men, everywhere, have some moral faculties and powers. A heathen man may be ignorant and primitive, but the law of God is written in his heart. His conscience approves his right conduct and condemns his wrong conduct. He has the same moral consciousness of a standard of right and wrong as any man who knows the Bible Romans 1:18-21, Also some in Romans 2.
For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualitiesâhis eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. - Romans 1:18-21
So that establishes clearly that everyone has an idea that there is a God. Even if they are born deep inside the amazon jungle and have never heard of Jesus, they know there is a God.
I believe the movie even may implies we in our urban jungle aren't any better for our materialistic values and ideas of sex and drugs than someone who has never heard of Jesus Christ. |
E-mail this page to a friend
