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Monster's Ball (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:8
Fresh:7
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Somber and thought provoking, Monster's Ball has great performances all around.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis:
MONSTER'S BALL is a hard hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. It is the story of Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), an embittered prison guard working on Death Row...
MONSTER'S BALL is a hard hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. It is the story of Hank (Billy Bob Thornton), an embittered prison guard working on Death Row who begins an unlikely, but emotionally charged affair with Leticia (Halle Berry), the wife of a man he has just executed. MONSTER'S BALL also features Heath Ledger and Peter Boyle. Boyle plays Hank’s bigoted, aging father, whose hatred seems to have poisoned his entire family as much as the family business, which is working on the prison Death Squad. Ledger plays Hank’s son, who is hell-bent on getting out of the family business. The film is directed by award-winning filmmaker Marc Forster. He was nominated for an IFP/West Spirit Award as Best Low Budget Feature and won the Movado "Someone to Watch" Prize at the 2001 Spirit Awards for his film, "Everything Put Together."
Set in Georgia, MONSTER'S BALL was filmed entirely on location in and around New Orleans, Louisiana and at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola (also known as "The Farm").
MONSTER'S BALL is from an original screenplay by Milo Addica and Will Rokos, is produced by Lee Daniels, executive produced by Mark Urman, Mike Paseornek, and co-produced by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. Lions Gate Films will release the film in December, 2001. -- © 2001 Lions Gate Films
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Mos Def
Director: Marc Forster
Director: Marc Forster
Screenwriter: Milo Addica, Will Rokos
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Reviews for Monster's Ball
Forster's poised direction, as well as powerful turns from Billy Bob Thornton and the Oscar-winning Halle Berry, make this compelling viewing.
Although director Marc Forster pulls decent performances from both Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry, coincidence-filled plotting, lame dialogue, and ham-fisted symbolism repeatedly undermine his best intentions.
The movie has the complexity of great fiction, and requires our empathy as we interpret the decisions that are made.
Burning with a quiet intensity, Monster's Ball is bolstered by a poetic, intelligent sensibility not seen in an American film since Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.
Enigmatic, elliptical and mesmerizing, Monster's Ball invites myriad responses and interpretations.
This is one of those rare movies in which even people glimpsed only for a moment or two seem to have lives that ramify beyond the screen, as if the story were being witnessed rather than dramatized.
Given the deliberate scarcity of action and dialogue, the actors are forced to rely heavily upon their interior lives, and more than deliver the goods.
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