Fierce People (2005)

Fierce People: Directed by Griffin Dunne. With Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Donald Sutherland, Chris Evans. A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.

“I literally have no idea how to rate this movie. It comes in two halves, and I quite liked both of them, but the two halves belong to completely different films. Have you ever been driving down a quiet country road near your house, taken a left turn and suddenly found yourself in Helmand Province, Afghanistan? Thatu0026#39;s what this movie is like – thereu0026#39;s a tonal shift around the halfway mark thatu0026#39;s so jarring, so out of place with whatu0026#39;s gone before, that it left me utterly dumbfounded, staring at the screen, saying over and over u0026#39;That didnu0026#39;t really happen, did it?u0026#39;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIf Iu0026#39;ve got trouble with it, I can only take pity on the people who had to market this movie. Itu0026#39;s a pretty light comedy for the first half – all wacky families, odd-but-cute kid taking his first steps towards manhood, that sort of thing, and itu0026#39;s all very well done. And at the centre of it all is Donald Sutherland, never better in the role of a patriarch who has made scads of money, but lost out in many other ways. Itu0026#39;s light and frothy and amusing and – then. Then the event happens, and everything turns VERY dark indeed. The second half plays more like a socially conscious melodrama, with teenage pregnancy, class division and… other issues. Itu0026#39;s good too, for what it is, but that seismic shift in the middle of the film makes it all pretty hard to stomach.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSo do I recommend this movie or not? Hell, I donu0026#39;t know. Both its parts are very good, but they add up to a baffling whole. I realize that that isnu0026#39;t necessarily very helpful, but you probably ought to be warned that this has been marketed as a comedy, and an enjoyable coming of age movie. Thatu0026#39;s true, but only up until the halfway mark…”