Monster's Ball (2001)

"Monster's Ball" tells of a white man and a black woman in the rural South coming together through desperate human need; each suffering grief, guilt, remorse, and misery. A slow, plodding drama with rumbling racial undercurrents, the film tells a simple story, though not uneventful, with finely nuanced performances, especially by Berry who earned her keep and kudos. Recommended for mature audiences into serious drama.

Fmovies: It's a well known fact that MONSTER'S BALL won Halle Berry an Oscar for best actress and led to one of the most bizarre sites in the history of the ceremony where Berry shrieked , wept and gnashed her teeth in an uncontrollable manner . She probably wasn't overcome with emotion - She was impersonating the average person's reaction to seeing this film !

Depressing doesn't even begin to sum up this movie . It starts with the domestic life of three generations of prison officers the Grotowski family , two of which give racist redneck scumbags a bad name . A black prisoner is about to be executed and the middle and younger Grotowski ( Hank and Sonny respectively ) are looking after him and these scenes are amongst the most feel good moments of the story ! Words fail to describe what a bleak depressing movie this is . It's about redemption and finding love in the worst of circumstances but it's never entirely convincing . The fate of Sonny Grotowski didn't ring true and in the case of Berry's character just how unlucky can someone be in such a short period of time ?

I will congratulate the performances of the cast in this very well acted movie . Billy Bob Thornton is probably best remembered as " one of the men who married Angelina Jolie " but is also one of America's underappricated actors ( His screen writing abilities are also overlooked ) who manages to rise above the sometimes inconsistent material while Halle Berry what can I say ? Apart from that she really did deserve the Oscar . Well regarded character actor and acting guru Peter Boyle might be disappointing as Hank's reactionary father but since his character spends most of his time sitting in a chair slowly dying from respiratory failure he's not given much to do

But it should be pointed out once again that this is a very sad and melancholy film that won't have anyone dancing in the aisles I did appreciate the good performances but I doubt I'll be watching it again in a hurry

Halle Berry may well have deserved her oscar, but this film is DIRE! It is slow-paced, depressing, contrived, lurid and unconvincing. The politically correct moralising on racial hatred is a cheap vehicle to justify such shallow two-dimensional characters, and plot. The main character's transition from racial bigot and abusive father to all-round Mr. Nice Guy is laughable, and even the painfully slow pace of the plot cannot disguise it. The one ray of light is the warmth between the condemned man and his son, but as it played such a minor role it does not go nearly far enough to redeem this awful movie. Unless you are into pseudo-arty, pretentious films, this will be endured rather than enjoyed.

Monster's Ball fmovies. "Monster's Ball" is presented by Director Marc Forster as a dark, dreary film-noir like drama involving the role of fate in bringing together two different but distraught people from different races.

The film opens as preparations are underway for the execution of Lawrence Musgrave (Sean Combs). Two of the prison guards are Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and his son Sonny (Heath Ledger). Musgrave's wife Leticia (Halle Berry) and his obese son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun) have come to see Musgrave to say their final goodbyes. Hank and Sonny live with the bigoted Buck who is Hank's father and who was also a prison guard. We learn that Buck has apparently bullied Hank all his life and now Hank is doing likewise to Sonny.

Following the execution, two tragic but unrelated events occur in the lives of Hank and Leticia. Hank, fighting off the predjudices taught him by his father, begins to fall for Leticia and eventually an inter-racial relationship ensues. But what if she finds out that Hank had a part in executing her husband?

Berry deservedly won the 2001 Academy Award as best actress for her role as the tragic Leticia. She displays a wide range of emotions from pity to sadness to dispare to ecstacy to happiness. Thornton is equally good as the similarly tragic Hank who goes through much of the same emotional changes. Peter Boyle is also excellent as the bigoted Buck. Ledger, in an all too brief role, shines as the son who really doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps. Calhoun evokes pity and sorrow as Leticia's son and the old Puffmeister, Combs gives a good low key performance as the doomed convict.

An excellent film but be forewarned that there are a couple of graphic sex scenes in the movie. Definitely not for the kiddies.

Monster's Ball is a compelling film of family conflict, rage and redemption. Halle Berry throws herself into this role like a prizefighter who leaves it all in the ring, and wins by unanimous decision. Billy Bob Thornton gives an electrifying performance as a man grappling with his demons and wanting his better self to emerge victorious.

This movie is a study in ambiguity. The characters are complex with human imperfection, no one (with the exception of Hank's father, played by Peter Boyle) emerging as completely likable or entirely bad. Hank's son played by Heath Ledger fulfills the adage that no good deed goes unpunished, and it's never clear that anyone truly gets whats coming to them.

I'm not sure one should read too much into this movie as a study of attitudes towards race in today's America, but as a portrayal of human frailty and the continuing quest for hope and optimism, Monster's Ball is a can't-miss film experience.

This is the kind of gritty, fuzz-free reality drama that keeps you musing about it long past the ending credits. It is unsparing in its depiction of all the light and dark sides of the human psyche, from racism to passion to insularity and even corpulence, mounting these on a platform so stark and unambiguous that the audience is not left with many choices - the reactions evoked are exactly the ones intended to be evoked, oscillating between disgust, outrage, sympathy, tenderness and occasionally, even a surreptitious smile.

Most of the characters in the movie suffer somewhat from a lack of complexity, which is compensated for by casting them into circumstantial conflict to create the dramatic tension (a husband is electrocuted, a child dies, another child sends a bullet through his heart and into the couch behind, and so on). This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially because the remarkable performances (particularly from Halle Berry) validate this ploy. The exception to this, however, is the character of Hank Grotowski, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob succeeds in imparting a subtle gray shade to this seemingly cardboard-cutout poster-boy-for-the-old-bigoted-south character that makes you hesitate from accepting him at face value. Is this simply about a saturnine, jaded racist being transformed by true love? Well, yes, that's part of it - the obvious part. But something keeps nagging you, preventing you from accepting this linear, justifiable inference, making you want to probe deeper, discover the reasons he has turned out this way, and even, in a perverse way, rationalize them. Is it just the provincial social climate? Is it the long proximity to his bigoted dotard of a father (played admirably by Peter Boyle)? Is he really that way or is he simply going with the flow? No simple explanation seems satisfactory - and the credit for this questioning, this need for deconstruction, goes to Billy Bob's nuanced performance.

All in all, beside the fact that some of the scenes may unsettle the squeamish, and that some promising characters like that of Grotowski's dispirited, conflicted son Sonny (played by Heath Ledger) were knocked off too early, the picture satisfies most norms for a good cinema experience - it makes you think, weep, squirm, analyze, rationalize, everything but walk out before it is over. In other words, it is what good cinema is about.