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| | Salesrank: 268186
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| Used Price: $39.50 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The unflinching realism and searing performances of Monster's Ball are stunning in all the connotations of the word. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia (Halle Berry) inhabit stark, queasy realities of the contemporary South, he as a death row corrections officer and she as the soon-to-be widow of an inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution Hank helps conduct. In the aftermath of the execution, both lose their children to tragic deaths and they form an unlikely bond. In the hands of lesser participants, the fateful plot might strain credibility and seem tailored to allow for liberal sermonizing about the obvious wrongs of our legal justice system, but director Marc Forster and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer balance the contentious nature of the film's issues--the death penalty, racism both overt and subtle, interracial couples--with a flawless attention to character and visual detail that completely convinces. The moral ambiguity of both central characters is given full voice as our sympathy is drawn out reluctantly at first but all the more resolutely in the end. Thornton draws from seemingly limitless resources to deliver yet another outstanding performance, but it is Halle Berry who is a revelation as she sustains throughout the complex tenor of brutality witnessed and raw courage defined. --Fionn Meade
Monster's Ball [Region 2] Reviews:
It tries to handle far too much and comes off rather desperate and uneven... 
2009-11-20 - We all know that I love depressing, and I love dark depictions of human suffering. I love to have my emotional core tapped, drained even, but harsh realities of humanity in its rawest form. This very year (2001, the year in question) was dominated in my eyes by the very bleak and very raw `In the Bedroom', a film that tapped into the most brutal depictions of grief and loss and vengeance I've ever seen on film. It may be concluded that, since I am so incredibly head-over-heals in love with `In the Bedroom' that my sentiments would be mirrored for the equally bleak and maybe ever more gritty depiction of depression `Monster's Ball'.
The issue I have with this film is that it is uneven and forced.
Don't get me wrong; there are many facets of this film that work brilliantly. For the most part the acting is very strong and the script, while definitely brutal (almost to a fault) is written with a layer of depth that makes the overwhelming feel forgivable. My complaint here is that the film could have been something truly remarkable if it had found its footing without resorting to complete and total devastation. I like my depressing, but there comes a point within a film where you sink so low that you cannot fathom a resolution.
The thing is, `Monster's Ball' isn't the kind of film that requires that absolute lowness.
The film revolves around the unlikely romance between a prison guard named Hank and a single mother named Leticia. Hank is a white borderline racist (he's more conditioned that way by an oppressive father than truly headstrong in that conviction) who happens to have a part in the execution of Leticia's husband, Lawrence. Leticia has a lot of things wrong with her life. She is struggling financially to take care of an overweight child she views as a burden, until he is hit by a car and killed and she realizes how empty she is on her own. She strikes up a drunken fling with Hank that leads to a mutual bonding over the loss of family (Hank's tormented son Sonny recently took his own life) that is tested by the truths behind Hanks' involvement in Lawrence's execution, not to mention Hank's father's outlandish racism.
The film is shot in a very grainy almost yellow overtone (an aspect of the film I absolutely adore) that gives you an instant sense of misery and emptiness. The performances by the cast elevate this mood. Heath Ledger deserves `best in show' mentions for his BRILLIANT supporting performance (cameo if you will) as Sonny. He evokes such pure emotional response to the situation, the line of work weighing in on his conscience and the emotional weight of his background and apparent emptiness crushing down on him. Billy Bob Thornton takes that same emotional deterioration and muddies it a bit to elongate the performance. He is essentially the same character, but Sonny's fatal explosion really makes his performance pop. Thornton is just as marvelous (in my opinion) just in a different way.
I thought the Peter Boyle was serviceable in a caricature that really only simplified the films promise and took it down a notch.
This brings me to Halle Berry (OSCAR winner Halle Berry). I admit, when she won I cheered. It was such a milestone and her acceptance speech was SO heartfelt and beautiful and just mesmerizing. Even if I felt that a few of her fellow nominees were more deserving (Kidman, Zellweger, Spacek) her win made me very happy. That said, her performance is quite uneven and actually sets the tone for the film itself being uneven. She manages to nail quite a few scenes, but she comes off desperate in some, unsure in others, and this takes away from the character. Her quieter scenes tend to work better than her loud ones, but even in those she has moments where she almost seems forcibly subtle, as if she has been studying over actress's quiet depictions of grief and trying to emulate. In her louder moments she comes across manic and desperate and overreaching for attention. Sometimes it works (that drunk scene, regardless of what some say, was flawless) and other times it just doesn't (the scene where she attacks her kid seemed overreaching for me). I love her and am happy for her and for her `moment', but in all honesty one cannot consider this a fully realized and deserving performance.
The films grittiness is almost to a fault in that it layers on the darkness without backing it up with a real sense of inner depth. Where it tries to make a statement on the legal systems death penalty, it misses the mark that the masterful `Dead Man Walking' hit. Where it attempts to connect with the effects of instilled racism, it misses the mark that films like `American History X' really connected to. Where it makes strides towards the grief and guilt ridden depiction of a parent outliving a child, it misses the mark that `In the Bedroom' completely nailed.
It has a lot of avenues it tries to cover but it lacks the finesse to cover each one thoroughly. It is a worthy viewing, but it doesn't reach the perfection that it could have found with a tighter script and a little more tailoring of Berry's performance.
That said; the final scene on the front porch stairs with Hank and Leticia is the perfect way to end and still haunts me today.
DVD
2009-11-18 - The DVD I purchesed had to be replaced had a few scraches but will do business with seller again
A somewhat over-rated film that received awards
2009-10-21 - I really wanted to like this film more because of its theme but I had problems with the writing and casting of it. For instance, Halle Berry, I feel despite winning the Oscar for her performance here, was miscast--she seems too beautiful and glamorous to convince me that she's an impoverished Southern black woman. Also the film seems to be under-written, I would've like to have more information about the relationship between her and the convict husband (Sean Combs, this film seemed to me to be more about Billy Bob's character than about her. Also the ending left me unresolved like that's it!? No sudden explosion from her when she realizes the secret that Billy Bob has been carrying with him all this time. But there is some fine acting in this film not only from the leads but also from its supporting players like Sean Combs, the late Peter Boyle and Heath Ledger, who in one final scene with Billy Bob, showed us how talented he really was. Maybe someday there'll be a better film on interracial relationships but this film is only half successful. At least this film is a bit better than Spike Lee's disasterous "Jungle Fever", a film ironically in which Berry made her debut as a hooker.
Over the head of the critics 
2009-10-02 - I think this film is probably a worst pick for the judgmental. If you have very unflinching ideas about sexuality, don't rent this film. I personally think that this is one of the better films for character development. It makes an extreme point that people are unpredictable. A racist may one day choose a change of lifestyle if events are enough to make that individual question the value of the life they have been living. That is the point of the movie, although it seems to be lost on the righteous here.
I think that this is the only movie that Halle Barry starred in in which she did a wonderful job. I do not agree that she was playing a stereotypical black woman. I do not think that there was anything stereotypical about her, and this is one of the few films that shows that black women are not towers of strength, that they do have difficulty raising kids, and sometimes....gasp...they hit their children. That is reality. Anyone that thinks that that is a "stereotype" should try being a single parent and finding out if it is as easy as it really ought to be. I think that Halle Barry does deserve credit for having the guts to play her character without being given a guilt trip about how that stereotypes black women when her character shows little examples of the usual depiction of black females that tends to show them as masculine and not romantic candidates or smooth talking lawyers when few of us actually are.
I think that one problem with this film is that it cannot possibly tell the story adequately without being hours long, and few people are going to sit through that. You have to have the common sense to understand that the movie does place a lot of events close together out of necessity. Barry's character does start up a sexual relationship near the time of her son's death, but if she had waited for a more opportune time we would all still be sitting in the theater. There is no opportune time (another point of the movie). I do not know if sex scenes in general help to convey a message or detract from that message. This film does have a very graphic sex scene. However, I do not agree that that is a problem for black women. As a black female the thing that I dislike the most is other people telling me that I cannot have a sex drive because that means that I am a stereotypical black woman. If Christian sexual morality is what you are looking for, this movie deliberately--as a course of philosophy, goes against your ideology, and you might want to get another film.
I thought all the character's in this movie where strong. Thorton's character is interesting. The plot is far-fetched and too fast paced for the time allotted, but it certainly was not a bad film.
mr. deitz 
2009-07-13 - case was in excellent shape. movie had small scratch at beginning which disrupted the film but was not terribly bad for the price.
