Halle Berry turns in an amazing performance.
Monster's Ball (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:141
Fresh:120
Rotten:21
Average Rating:7.4/10
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
Recalls Tender Mercies, another astutely acted character study that remained resolutely small-scale and was all the more affecting because it didn't overreach.
It's not a polemic on the death penalty, race relations or family dynamics. It's a character study that really sticks with you.
Much of the film works, performances all around are better than the script, and the whole (especially the first part) is well directed by Marc Forster.
A fine film that packs enormous ambition into a modest, carefully executed package.
In a movie season already nourished with tales of domestic despair, Monster's Ball is the most complex, naturalistic, and sympathetic.
less a love story than a movie about love — about how it leeches into disparate hearts and desperate circumstances, about raw and unlikely and redemptive it can be
A serious movie made by seriously talented people, and I never quite came 'round to it.
How nice it must be to be Hank, the strong man, swooping in to be Leticia's knight-in-shining-armor. How convenient, also, that this woman happens to be as beautiful as Halle Berry.
Marc Forster’s downbeat Southern drama really is a low-rent version of Carl Franklin’s powerful One False Move
There is so little love in this movie - it's really depressing. It's hard to buy into the rapid transformation that Billy Bob Thornton's character makes. You either believe the chemistry between the two actors, or you don't - I didn't.
Sadness engulfs the people in this provocative drama like a dense fog, leaving them with little sense of direction or purpose except trying to get by each day. Stunning performances!
In its deliberate pacing and its jolting turns, the movie is reminiscent of director Casi Lemmons' "Eve's Bayou," another Southern tale swamped in moodiness.
A Última Ceia mergulha sem reservas no triste universo de seus protagonistas, retratando-os de forma honesta e, justamente por isso, despertando reações ambíguas na platéia.
Halle Berry, of all people, gives one of the year's strongest performances
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