Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Milo Addica & Will Rokos

Billy Bob Thornton .... Hank Grotowski
Halle Berry .... Leticia Musgrove
Heath Ledger .... Sonny Grotowski
Peter Boyle .... Buck Grotowski
Sean 'Puffy' Combs .... Lawrence Musgrove
Coronji Calhoun .... Tyrell Musgrove

Produced by Milo Addica (co-producer) Michael Burns (executive producer), Lee Daniels (producer), Eric Kopeloff (co-producer), Tom Ortenberg (executive producer), Michael Paseornek (executive producer), Will Rokos (co-producer), Mark Urman (executive producer)
Cinematography by Roberto Schaefer
Film Editing by Matt Chesse

MPAA: Rated R for strong sexual content, language and violence

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Review by
SIMON REMARK
simon_remark@hotmail.com
Film Reviewer
Simon graduated from Trinity Western University where he studied film under prolific screenwriter Ned Vankevich. He prefers independent and lower-budget films.

Monster's Ball isn't really a film about racism or an interracial relationship, although it does deal with these issues. It more closely looks at how two completely desperate people find new life in one another.

Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) is a racist-he calls a fellow officer a 'nigger' and chases two young black kids off of his property with a shotgun. And Leticia (Halle Berry) is African American. But the film focuses more on their mutual need to transcend their troubling pasts. Both are broken. Both are seeking redemption.

Hank's father Buck (Peter Boyle) is a bitter racist, seemingly devoid of emotion. In one scene he talks about how his dead wife failed him: "I got more pussy after she died," he says. He's absolutely malevolent. And he has passed this hate on to his son. But Hank's son Sonny (Heath Ledger) is gentle and forgiving, and therefore thought weak by his father and grandfather.

They are three generations of corrections officers. Buck is retired but Hank and Sonny work on Death Row. And Leticia's husband, Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs), is currently on Death Row. He's an artist who sketches Hank and Sonny while awaiting his execution-these sketches become the catalyst for a final lingering confrontation between Hank and Leticia.

Sonny is kind and tender when interacting with Musgrove; his father is cold and detached. Even Leticia, in her final visit with her husband, is very indifferent. She says she's only visiting for their son's sake, a chubby youngster who idolizes his father. (Leticia is an abusive mother; when she finds her son eating a chocolate bar, she beats him and puts him on a scale to show him how fat he is.) In their final conversation Lawrence tells his son that he's a very bad man, but assures the youngster that he's got all the best of his daddy in him.

Hank is also abusive. While escorting Musgrove to his execution, Sonny keels over and vomits, and after the execution Hank beats up his son in the bathroom. He is so disgusted with his son's compassion that in the following scene we see him violently trashing his son's bedroom, telling him to get out, until Sonny pulls a gun out from underneath his pillow and tells his father to get out.

And after kicking him around the house for a while-this is the first time we see Hank vulnerable-Sonny says: "You hate me don't you." Hank responds, "I always have." Sonny replies, "Well I've always loved you," and in a shocking moment turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger. When he is buried the minister asks Hank if there's a particular passage he'd like to hear. Hank responds, "The only thing I wanna hear is the dirt hitting the coffin." Sonny is buried next to his mother and grandmother.

Leticia also loses her son (he was apparently hit by a car). Hank sees them on the side of the road and rushes them to the hospital. And this is when Hank and Leticia find each other. In a following scene we see just how incredibly desperate these two are. And the remainder of the film looks at how two people with troubling pasts can change.

But the haunting final scene sort of leaves us wondering, although Leticia's demeanor does answer some questions, in my opinion. Several scenes tend to suggest that Hank has left his past behind; however, Leticia is more of a question mark. But more importantly, the film shows that there is redemption and a chance at a new life for these two very flawed, broken people.

Review by DARREL MANSON
Pastor, Artesia Christian Church, Artesia, CA
http://netministries.org/see/churches/ch01198

Darrel has an incredible love and interest in the cinematic arts. His reviews usually include independent and significantly important film. Some of his reviews: Chocolat, Dancer in the Dark, Faithless, Finding Forrester, Memento, O Brother Where art Thou, Pollock, Quills, Shadow of a Vampire, Widow of St Pierre, Jump Tomorrow, Tortilla Soup, Go Tiger, Life As a House, The Business of Strangers, The Man Who Wasn't There, A Beautiful Mind, In the Bedroom, Shipping News, Amelie, I Am Sam, Rollerball, Monster's Ball

Monster's Ball is a powerful movie about getting beyond the walls that hem us in. The film uses the visual metaphor of walls throughout. We spend much of our time looking through various kinds of walls. They may be prison bars or they may be windows or screen doors or doorways. Those barriers serve as a reminder of the walls that make up our lives.

The story revolves around Hank Grotowski, a corrections officer colonel; his father Buck, a retired corrections officer; and Hank's son Sonny, who is also a corrections officer. There is a grotesqueness about this family (Grotowski -- grotesque) and their lack of love for one another. But Hank's life begins to change and he begins to look for new ways of living and finds love in the process.

Hank begins a relationship with is a black woman. They are bonded in their common experience of the death of a child. But she is the widow of a man he helped execute in prison. As they begin their relationship, neither knows this. Can they overcome such a basic wall between them?

The metaphorical walls abound: racism, misogyny, generational differences, class, secrets. As we watch the movie through various walls, we know that we aren't seeing everything. Doorways cut off part of our view. As we see the execution through the windows of the witnesses gallery, the sound is muffled. As Hank and Leticia talk in the front of his car, we look through the window and only see parts of them. The walls are confining, just as the walls that fill the world often confine us to the little boxes of our lives.

In the end of the film, we see hope for Hank and Leticia because they sit out on the porch and look at the heavens -- there are no more walls.

The film is marked by wonderful performances. I don't know how Peter Boyle could stand to put himself into the role of Buck, but he carries an air of malevolence through every scene he's in. Halle Berry is a combination of vulnerable and defensive. Billy Bob Thornton is able to make the transformation of his character believable and is able to make us care for his character in spite of his roughness.

The film's R rating is well deserved. It is a film with serious violence (including an execution in the electric chair) and sex. The intensity of the sex scenes in the movie may turn off some, but the sex is not gratuitous. Its brutality, coldness and mild deviance tell us about the characters. And one of the ways we see the change taking place in Hank is through the sex scenes.

For those not upset by such things, Monster's Ball is a chance to see what can happen when we are able to get beyond our walls.

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