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Monster's Ball Customer Reviews (67 - 69 of 85 Reviews)

two messed up people
Take away all the hype about race and bigotry and in the end you have an intense little movie about two messed up people and the love that changes their lives and saves them. It features remarkable performances by Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry who of course won the Oscar.

Billy Bob Thornton's character is unhappy in his job as a prison guard, unhappy as a son to revolting father, and unhappy as a father to a messed up son. Leticia is a woman who's had a hard life. Her husband was just executed for murder, she's too fond of sipping on liquor miniatures and she's failed as a mother to her deeply unhappy son.

Any discussion about Monster's Ball eventually gets to the sex scene. Yes, it's raw. There's no romantic lighting or sex scene music. There's no attempt to make the actors look glamorous. It's just two sad people going at it in an attempt to forget their lives for a bit. It's the most unerotic sex scene you've ever seen in a movie and to tell the truth, it could've been a lot shorter or skipped altogether.

The movie has a couple of other flaws. Every human obstacle to the couple's relationship is conveniently done away with. Leticia's husband and son die. Hank's son dies and he packs his bigoted, foul mouthed father off to a black owned nursing home. In real life things don't work out this way and that was the films major hype point: it's supposed raw reality.

Nonster's Ball is not as controversial or as great as the media makes it seem but it is a good movie. It's not something I'd want to watch every week but I'm glad I bought it.

Monster's Ball: Some People Change--Some Don't
One of the best pictures of 2001 is MONSTER'S BALL. It is no surprise that Halle Berry won an Oscar for her role as Leticia, an African-American wife who has to cope with the loss of her son just as she has to learn to cope with the problems involved in having a white lover, played by Billy Bob Thornton. This film is noteworthy for more than just the extraordinary acting of its cast, but for its subtext that suggests that as society changes, some people manage to change with it and stay afloat, while others cannot or will not, and pay a fearsome price.
Director Marc Forster sets the stage in a Southern prison with the upcoming execution of a convict played by Sean Combs, who in his brief role manages to invest his character with a myriad of conflicting emotions, most of which revolve around his wife, an uncaring Leticia, and an overweight son who cares enough for both himself and his mother. She no longer has any feeling for her husband and blames his long criminal career as the reason. All she cares about is giving her son the opportunity to say goodbye to his father. The scenes between the condemned and the prison guards responsible for making sure the execution goes off without a hitch are played with an undercurrent of inevitability. Each recognizes that they all have a role to play in a script that was written when the governor turned down Combs' last minute stay of execution. Heath Ledger plays Hank's son who dares to alter the script slightly by vomiting in horror at his own role. It was painful for the audience to see how callously Hank beats his son, thus identifying him as surely the villain. But in this movie, not all monsters wear horns or are incapable of change. Heath Ledger cannot change nor can he reconcile his feelings of rage at the system with rage at a father who so clearly supports a life-denying system. In despondency, he shoots himself. Hank, who admits that he once hated his son, now begins to change. At home, his father, well-played by Peter Boyle, represents the dying view of the South as the last bastion of resistance against civil rights and uppity nigras. His venom, upon seeing that his son is involved with a black woman, is brutally cutting, more so because his remarks do not represent a thoughtful insult but merely the tip of a prejudiced iceberg whose icy base extends all the way to Reconstruction. He,like his son, cannot change, and his punishment is to be exiled to a nursing home. Leticia is first seen as a mean woman whose rage at a criminal husband extends to an obese son who eats more the more she hits him for being obese. When her son is killed in a hit and run, her grief is real, even if she expresses it first by laughing, then crying, then laughing again. She and Hank connect, with each one suffering greatly, but in Hank's case, his pain is internalized. It is only by the mildest change of voice tone does he suggest that his calm face hides a heart that is at least as devastated as Leticia's. They begin an affair that starts out as pure sex. It is only after several graphic couplings that expose Halle Berry's nude body, does she begin to see that pain comes and goes, but it is trust that must endure. Leticia must endure the overt racism of Hank's father and the unexpected discovery of Hank's participation in her husband's execution before she realizes that the many monsters that lurk in everyone's soul are put there by that person, and that with love, with courage, and with effort, they can be removed too.

Halle Earned Her Oscar, but This Movie Is Unsettling
"Monster's Ball" is about two people who are united through circumstance and tragedy. Billy Bob Thornton plays Hank, a prison guard who has an adult son (an impressive Heath Ledger) and takes care of his boorish, redneck father. Halle Berry is Leticia, a woman whose husband (a very good Sean Combs) is on death row, can't seem to hold down a job, and vents her frustrations on her obese young son. Neither Hank nor Leticia is a very good parent, and they come from two entirely different backgrounds. But on one rainy evening, they cross paths with each other, and from there a relationship begins. However, what Leticia doesn't know is that Hank was one of the people who assisted her husband's execution. And, as with almost all interracial relationships, tension rises between them, and Hank is forced to confront his racist demons.

This is a very upsetting movie, and the material deals with some very volatile issues. But it soars on the strength of the performances. The spotlight is clearly Halle's, who rightfully earned her Oscar. An actress known for her beauty, she de-glamed herself in this gritty performance, and she pulled it off without faking a single move. But props also has to go to Billy Bob Thornton, who gives a dynamite performance as well. Following "The Man Who Wasn't There," Thornton is on a roll, and is becoming one of the finest actors in the last ten years. And let's not forget rapper Mos Def, who makes a brief, but compelling appearance as Hank's neighbor. "Monster's Ball" may be a tough movie to sit through, but it's easily one of the best films of 2001 and warrants a purchase.

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