Viper in the Fist Review Score: 5/10 | Date Posted: June 13th 2005 In: DVD Reviews Viper in the Fist Review by Vince D’Amato Starring: Catherine Frot, Jacques Villeret, Jules Sitruk Directed by: Philippe de Broca Released by: Seville Pictures Blurbed as “A Delicious Alternative to Harry Potter!” by Variety, Viper in the Fist is actually a story about a young boy, Jean Rezeau, living at a family estate in Brittany, and his mother who is apparently a descendent of fairy-tale witches, but is really just a grumpy old hag. It’s a straight-out drama with themes of child abuse and adultery in family values, despite the back-of-the-box description of “an atmosphere of comical but vicious civil war” (?!). Told in a flashback and narrated style from the boy’s point of view as an adult, we’re recounted with the family life as a European soap-opera drama. The boy playing the lead character is very good, but still can’t drum up much charisma from the often dull telling of the plot. Same goes for the mother (great performance), but the main problem is that these characters end up only feeding the audiences memories of better characters in a sub-genre that the distributors of this film wishes it was in, (like Angelica Huston in “The Witches” ), and never ends up hitting the mark on its own, despite several valiant attempts. Overall, Viper in the Fist is well-made yet ultimately unsatisfying, plateauing instead of dramatically climaxing, leaving the viewer often unfulfilled. Sadly, part of the reason for this is that the filmmaker had intended this story to be a trilogy – something that will not happen now; Broca died last year. But since the intended future chapters of this story will not be filmed, we the audience must now take this film as a stand-alone piece, unfinished or not. And furthermore, contrasting the poor marketing attempts toward Harry Potter fans, There is none of the comic-book charm of The Harry Potter stories, in spite of a few lame parallels exploited for the DVD box description of the movie, and I’d think that fans of that series would be better off twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the next Potter sequel to hit theatres instead of trying to satisfy their anticipation with this ultimately mediocre film. Too bad, too – there were just so many almosts in this film, it’s really a shame thinking of what it might have (or could have) been. Viper in the Fist is not only based on a novel by Herve Bazin, but is also a remake of a 1971 French film of the same name. If nothing else, I’d be curious to see the original film. DVD Bonus Feature (stats only): A trailer for Viper as well as other films in Seville’s catalogue. Subtitled, 2.35:1 Image Ratio enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

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