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the audience applauded

Nice effects though.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie ever!

Capital punishment, racism and abusive parents feature strongly in this story about the healing power of love and its great ability to grow in even the most unlikely circumstances. The mood is often sombre and the characters' feelings of despair, grief and regret are profound. Despite all of this, the hope and comfort that unexpected love can bring is ultimately shown as being able to point the way to hope and optimism for the future. In the wrong hands, a story like this could easily have developed into a melodramatic slush-fest but fortunately in this case, the movie was directed more intelligently with uncompromising depictions of its characters and the romantic developments being presented without sentimentality.Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) is a Georgia prison Corrections Officer who's responsible for supervising the arrangements leading up to the execution of convicted cop-killer Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs). Hank's team includes his son, Sonny (Heath Ledger) and on the day of the execution, when the prisoner is being led to the electric chair, Sonny becomes overwhelmed by what's happening, starts vomiting and has to break off from the detail to recover. After the execution has been carried out, Hank violently attacks his son in front of the other men in his team and then when they return home, a second attack concludes with Sonny killing himself. Hank had always hated his son for being weak and after his suicide, swiftly buries him and then resigns from his job.Hank lives with his white racist father, Buck (Peter Boyle) who's a retired Corrections Officer and a wheelchair-bound invalid. His wife had committed suicide some years earlier.Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry) had worked hard to bring up her son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun) during the eleven years that her husband Lawrence had been on death row awaiting the outcomes of various appeals but now, after his execution, had arrived at a real low-point facing the prospect of losing her car, her job and her house. Tyrell had inherited his father's talent for drawing but gets beaten and verbally abused by his mother because she's disgusted by his obesity. One night, Hank is driving along a stretch of road when he sees Leticia screaming for help and after discovering that Tyrell had been injured by a hit-and-run driver, takes the boy and his mother to the nearest hospital. A short time later, Tyrell dies and afterwards, Hank drives Leticia home not realising that this would lead to a relationship that would bring them both a great deal of comfort and start to make them feel human again."Monster's Ball" doesn't pull any punches in showing the pain that people in dysfunctional families can suffer or the damaging effects that a bigoted, bullying, patriarch can have on the lives of his offspring. Hank's experience of being brought up by Buck had naturally led to him becoming a racist and regarding anyone who's sensitive as being weak. The potential for this kind of attitude to continually be passed from father to son is extremely powerful and damaging and so, it's particularly ironic that in Hank's case, after suffering a dreadful tragedy in his life, he should find comfort in a relationship with a black woman whose life had also been blighted by tragedy.When Hank and Leticia meet for the first time, they don't know that they're connected by Lawrence's execution and the ways in which they both discover this information at different times and reconcile themselves to the situation, is both very powerful and brilliantly acted."Monster's Ball" is full of good performances with Peter Boyle and Heath Ledger standing out in their supporting roles. The casting of Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry in the leading roles is also perfect as they both make their characters believable as individuals as well as showing, in a very natural way, how well they get to appreciate each other's company. This movie is strong on simplicity and realism and it's these qualities that contribute so much to its incredible power and poignancy.

The title refers to a supposed tradition in England of holding a party for a condemned murderer, the "monster's ball", the night before his execution. This "tradition" appears to be an invention of the scriptwriters; the death penalty was abolished in Britain more than thirty years before the film was made, and I have never come across any reference to its existence before that.The film tells the story of a love affair between Leticia Musgrove, the widow of an executed murderer, and Hank Grotowski, a prison officer at the local jail. What Leticia does not realise is that Hank actually participated in her husband Lawrence's execution. Other plot lines include Leticia's attempt to bring up her son Tyrell after his father's death and Hank's complicated relationships with his son Sonny and with his own father Buck. Much of the tension in the Grotowski family arises from the fact that Sonny is himself a prison guard at the same jail and that Hank regards him as too "soft" to do the job. Leticia is black and Hank white, so this adds a certain racial tension to their relationship, especially as Buck is a confirmed racist and Hank seems to have inherited some of his father's attitudes. I won't set out any more of the plot, although I can say that it involves some very dark twists; Lawrence's execution is certainly not the last death. At times it almost seems too dark, as though tragedy were being piled upon tragedy.(I said that Leticia is black, but she is of course played by the mixed- race Halle Berry. Hollywood, however, has always treated mixed-race actors as black for casting purposes, hence the casting of the Scottish- Nigerian Carmen Ejogo as Coretta King in the recent "Selma". I doubt if in reality Berry would have had a son who looked like Tyrell).Whether Berry deserved her "Best Actress" Academy Award is something I am not sure of- personally I would incline more towards Judi Dench for her role in "Iris"- although this is probably the best of all Berry's performances which I have seen. The one really outstanding performance, however, comes from Billy Bob Thornton as the violently conflicted Hank. The late Heath Ledger is also very good as Sonny, desperately trying to live up to his father's unrealistic expectations of him.Roger Ebert said of "Monster's Ball" that "The movie has the complexity of great fiction" and considered it the best film of 2001. Not everyone agreed with Ebert- the film was not nominated for "Best Picture"- but in one way he was right; I can certainly imagine a great novel being written around this story. That does not, however, necessarily mean that it is a great film. In a novel the author would have more space to do justice to all the many themes and characters which here are rather swept under the carpet. He would have had room to examine in more detail the relationship between Lawrence and Leticia, the crime for which he was sentenced and the American justice system which sentenced him. He could have paid more attention to the obviously troubled history of the Grotowski family- we learn, for instance, that Buck's wife committed suicide without learning why- and to the toxic father-son relationships between Buck and Hank and between Hank and Sonny. Sonny in particular seems a tragic, haunted figure, so it seemed a pity to me that he died early on and that his death was treated mostly as a prelude to the main event, the affair between Hank and Leticia. Trying to deal with all these matters in the scope of a normal two-hour film results in a claustrophobic, over-intense piece of hothouse film- making. Despite its shortcomings as a piece of story-telling, however, the film nevertheless gives scope for some good acting. 6/10

Interracial relationships are often more risqué and bear a greater magnitude because you likely have to go an extra mile to make it work, or have some member of your family overcome assumptions or opposition to the other race so the person can have a healthy without worrying about senseless judgments on their being. It's because of this, and the ridiculous controversy that surrounds such a practice, that, I believe, the amount of interracial relationships in Hollywood are shockingly little and the idea is so frequently underexplored that, if it were just given a bit more exposure, could free us from the shackles bestowed upon us by lame and incredulous romance dramas. With the right marketing, proper writing, and strong acting, a film about interracial relationships could be defining for a large, underserved demographic.Marc Forster's Monster's Ball is an efficient and substantial film concerning interracial relationships and how grief can transcend even the biggest boundaries in our lives, especially those built by our own parents and relatives. It concerns Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton), a quietly racist widower who works with his son Sonny (Heath Ledger) in a corrections office and takes care of his ailing, openly racist father (Peter Boyle). Hank often oversees executions that occur in his corrections department, and often doesn't appreciate the hard work and dependency of his son, criticizing him that he's too soft and too weak-hearted to handle his job. After a confrontation at their home, Sonny proceeds to kill himself right in front of his father. Hank moves on with his life by burying Sonny in the backyard and quitting his job at the corrections office.Early in the film we also find ourselves meeting Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry), a woman who has been struggling while raising her overweight, artistic son Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun) while her husband Lawrence (Sean Combs) was in prison and subsequently executed by Hank. Hank sees Leticia in a local diner quite frequently, but one day on his travels home, sees Leticia crying while holding Tyrell in her arms after he is struck by a car. Despite prompt efforts by Hank and Leticia, Tyrell dies in the hospital, leaving Leticia distraught and without two of the biggest people in her life.A heartwrenching scene takes place between Leticia and Tyrell early in the film. Leticia has been concerned about Tyrell's weight for a while, and finds that he keeps eating chocolate and not trying to stick to any kind of diet. She is so frustrated about his disobedience that she winds up physically abusing him, forcing him onto a scale and slapping him around repeatedly. The scene is devastating because not only do we know that Leticia is just acting out on momentary stress, but we see that Tyrell, who already seems to have very few friends and opportunities to exercise his artistic passion, is simply confined to physical abuse and upsetting, emotionally scarring treatment. One wonders if the real life story of Calhoun was similar to the one he conveys on screen (I say "was" because Calhoun was listed as "missing" following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and there have been no subsequent reports of him being found, leading me to believe he's missing and presumed dead as of 2014).It almost goes without saying that the performances are spectacular all across the board, from two low-key, beautifully nuanced performances by Thornton and Berry to a wonderfully tender and often saddening performance by Calhoun. And together, they make the somber and often tonally-rich screenplay of Milo Addica and Will Rokos work, by carefully constructing the right scenes and never overplaying others for emotional manipulation. Both Addica and Rokos do a beautiful job at showing how in a time of grave uncertainty and untold sadness that even two people with nothing remotely in common, bearing two separate views on life, can come together and miraculously find solace in each other - even the way the film handles sex is in a deeply human, respectful way. Monster's Ball shows that without overplaying its core emotions nor turning into a pile of cliché-ridden drivel; it's a carefully-crafted, somber film concerning heavy topics explored in a mannered way.Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Coronji Calhoun, Peter Boyle, and Sean Combs. Directed by: Marc Forster.

I think that an important aspect of this story is the fact that two ordinary characters, Hank and Leticia, who went through dramatic and tragic life experiences, and who live in a place where racism get apart persons of different ethnicities, are capable of developing a true love between them. Hank is a guy who worked all his life as a prison guard. His son who was also a prison guard is murdered. Leticia is a woman who works as a waiter in a café. Her husband was executed in the prison where Hank worked and her beloved son dies in consequence of having being hit by a car. They live in a place where racism is alive and where Hank's father is an example of this nasty culture. I would say that this film is much stronger and human than "Un Homme Et Une Femme" of Claude Lelouch. So much stronger, that there was no need of a musical sound track like that beautiful song of Francis Lai. In time, I don't know if the sex scenes were really necessary, or if they could have been filmed in a different way, less explicit.