Monster

After just seeing this film, I'm pretty much speechless. This is a tough film to comment on. This is mainly due to the fact that it's a serial killer film where you actually end up feeling sympathy for the killer. Near the end of the film, when it goes completely out of control for Aileen Wuornos, there's no feeling of "justice is done once again"... quite the contrary, actually. It's so moving and disturbing, following this person's life, through the last part of it. In the beginning, we get a fairy tale-like presentation of Aileen's hopes and dreams in her young years. Without warning, we're thrust into the hard reality of her current years, immediately afterward. From there on out, we're in her world, feeling her pain, experiencing her failures. We get to know her as the film goes on, but we feel for her from the very beginning, without even knowing why she is like she is. That says something about the masterful direction and writing of Patty Jenkins that is featured in this film. The plot is great, and it's surprisingly easy to follow the thought process of Aileen... we understand why she kills. The pacing is very good, there are only few scenes that seem to move slow, and I don't think there was really any point where I was bored. The locations is incredibly authentic. Jenkins actually went out of her way to get shooting done at several places where the real Aileen had been, and even cast people who had met her in smaller roles. Cinematography is great. Acting is pretty much flawless; both Theron and Ricci shine in their roles. The movie also has a unpleasant view of prejudice from the 'other side'(the people who become victims to prejudice), and hopefully this will act as a much needed wakeup call for the people who believe in and go by prejudice. What really makes this film have an impact is how dark and real it is. No happy ending, no silver lining... just tough, uncut reality. When you see it, you can't help getting engulfed in this person's world. The raw horror of her life moves you. I can't see anyone, no matter ignorance, beliefs or moral and ethic standpoint coming out after seeing this film and believing that Eileen was the 'bad guy' in this story. It's just not possible. I haven't seen any of the interviews with the real Aileen Wuornos and I didn't follow her case, but I would like to know more about her, find out what she was like to a greater extent than a movie of 1 hour and 45 minutes can tell me. That's what this movie did to me. It made me care for this person, and that says more than anything I can put in this review. You need to see this film, unless you refuse to watch anything that has harsh reality instead of a happy ending. I recommend this to anyone who can take it. This movie will depress most people, but after this one viewing, I consider it required viewing for just about anyone. 8/10

Let me begin by saying that Charlize Theron gives the best female performance that I have ever seen on film. Theron deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. I can not recall a performance, male or female, with such raw intensity. For those who may not know, MONSTER is the true story of Aileen Wuornos, a Florida prostitute who was executed a couple of years ago for killing men that picked her up on the highway. However, this is much, much more than a deranged serial killer flick. This film shows us, very convincingly, how a person can be led to a life of violence. Aileen had an awful childhood and an awful life. She was molested as a child by her father as well as other male relatives. As a child, she was surrounded by abuse, drug addiction, and domestic violence. Men horribly abused her as a child, and she began prostituting at age thirteen. In her later years, Aileen became a prostitute because it had been grilled into her head all her life that she was just a whore. As MONSTER opens, Aileen's car breaks down and she wanders into what she doesn't know is a gay bar. Sitting alone at a table is lonely, confused lesbian Selby (Christina Ricci), who strikes up a conversation with the dirty, unkempt Aileen, who washes her hair in gas station sinks and uses the hand dryer to fix her hair. After many drinks, Aileen and Selby become close, and soon enter into an unhealthy, torrid, tragic love affair. Selby is naive and has always been sheltered, and she just wants genuine love. However, Aileen has issues that Selby doesn't see at first. There is certainly nothing positive or redeeming about serial killers, but you often feel yourself having a small bit of sympathy for Aileen because you realize why she kills the men who pick her up...SHE HATES MEN. Aileen has always hated men, and the only love scenes in which any tenderness and emotion is shown are the lesbian love scenes between Aileen and Selby. You also feel some sorrow for Aileen because she DOES want to improve herself, but has no way of knowing how to do so. There are scenes where Aileen applies for jobs because she really wants to do right, but she is always rejected. She applies for secretarial jobs at law offices and is laughed right out of the building while she curses and screams at everyone. She doesn't know any better because she has no social skills. In one of the most powerful scenes, Aileen is hitch hiking and is picked up by a genuinely nice man who offers to help her. He is sincere and doesn't want sex. He is a decent man who offers a helping hand, but Aileen just can not trust any man. She tells him she doesn't want to kill him, but because her previous killings are all over the news, she has to kill him so she won't be identified. Selby, meanwhile, learns of Aileen's murderous rampage and tearfully decides to go to the authorities. What makes this film so powerful is that this is A TRUE STORY. Aileen Wuornos had a miserable life. Life dealt her a s@@@@y hand. She never had a chance. Growing up, nobody....teachers, parents, relatives....reached out to her. You can't excuse a serial killer rampage, but this is the only "serial killer" film that I have seen that at least offers some reasoning behind the insanity. Again, this is intense, and Charlize Theron is AMAZING.

I sometimes wonder why more people can't be nice. I wonder why the sins of the father have to plague the lives of his children. Why people rape, abuse, hurt, and maim. In a perfect world everyone would be happy. In a perfect world no one would ever want. In a perfect world a women like Aileen Wurnos would not have been sentenced to die on death row, and in a real world I wouldn't have to write about a movie like MONSTER. It's a movie that drips with exceptional performances, and yet leaves your soul so cold to the core.

MONSTER is the tragic true story of a woman who longed for a friend, and nobody came to her aid. It stars Charlize Theron (The Devil's Advocate) as Aileen Wurnos, one of the first women to ever die on death row. Of course the film doesn't begin that way, when we first meet her she's sitting in the rain with a gun contemplating ending it all. You see she's has no future. She has nothing but a past that's not worth repeating, and all she has in the world is in a storage locker. What little money she has, is gained by being a prostitute. But one day in a little bar in Daytona Beach, Florida she meets and falls for a woman that finally makes her happy.

The woman is named Selby (Christina Ricci, The Opposite of Sex), and she's a young lesbian just trying to figure out the world for herself. At first this relationship puts Aileen on cloud nine. She's willing to do anything to provide for the first person that ever loved her.

But one night when Aileen kills a john who gets a little to rough, a series of events take our characters on a one way trip with destiny. Leaving the landscape of these two women's lives are forever changed. If only someone had just been nice to Aileen.

MONSTER is not a happy film. It's one of those movies that leaves you dead at the end. You lose faith in humanity; you lose faith in yourself. I like these kinds of movies, cause they convict me. Here I am a young guy who sometimes gets ticked off at a driver in front of me on the road. For one split moment I have murderous anger when that guy cuts me off. What if I was in Aileen's situation? Would I do the same thing? I would hope not, but hey you never know.

If there is one performance that will tear you up inside this year, it's Theron's. For the entire movie you can hardly believe that this is, in real life, a beautiful women. Theron throws all the glamour out the window, gaining weight and frumping herself up to the point of being ugly. This is a complete 360 and she's so engrossing. She carries the film to heights. A lesser actress might turn in a wonderful performance, but Theron was Aileen. This is some brilliant acting.

I also give Kudos to Bruce Dern . His character has the distinction of being the only person who shows any real compassion for Aileen. While a small role it sticks out because it's the only real bit of bright light in an otherwise dark and gloomy picture.

The screenplay by Patty Jenkins (Who also directed) does a great job of giving Aileen and those around her life. What Aileen did was reprehensible. What she did was evil, and she must pay for that. But it allows for sympathy. Not all evil is dark and black, and not all people who murder are 100% culpable. But yet you reap what you sow no matter what you're past.

MONSTER is a well-made, brilliantly acted film that's not for the weak of heart. It's engaging, engrossing, and realistic. I think I want to rush out and get the silliest comedy I can find right now, because I need something to offset the dark tone of this film. While it get a fine recommendation, I just hope that the next time you feel like treating someone like crap, you'll remember just how tragic the life of Aileen Wurnos turned tragic because nobody reached out.

An intense, depressing movie. It sticks pretty close to the facts but focuses chiefly on the relationship between Charlize Theron as Lee and Christina Ricci as Selby. The police are hardly there at all. In fact, neither is anyone else except for Bruce Dern who makes one or two short but welcome appearances.

It could easily have been a by-the-numbers TV movie. (Come to think of it, it has, hasn't it? With Jean Smart?) But the production values are good, and the time and money has been spent on this film that we usually associate with feature films.

The cinematography is outstanding. The shots of Lee near the end of her rope, hitching on a foggy blue nightime Florida highway look like a desktop theme from some arty horror/occult site. The script doesn't have many tag lines. No "Rosebuds" or "I coulda been a contendah." Nor is it folksy or catching in some other way. The dialogue follows the story in being pretty straightforward and without much in the way of noticeable touches. The director should be commended on her handling of two things. One is the explanation for Lee's crimes. None is given. There is a short scene in which Lee tells one of her johns about her miserable childhood, but the abuse excuse is vitiated by Selby's mother, an orthodox and unimaginative woman, who says simply that lots of people have hard childhoods without growing up like Lee. And the men are not all turned into sadistic hogs, which must have been a temptation for the writers. The second virtue in the direction is its management of the murders. Instead of exploding heads, there are a few squibs, and usually not even that, before the victim yields to the fathomless, cool, enwinding arms of death. The themes explored here are not so much violence as love and desperation.

Ricci looks the part, with her broad forehead and tiny lips, but comes across more as a Valley Girl than the kind of outcast who would pick up and move off with someone like Lee.

Which brings us to Theron's performance as Lee. It's startling, of course, to see a glamor-puss like Theron so thoroughly deglamorized. It's the kind of performance that wins Academy Awards -- lesbians, the height-challenged, autistics, all have won awards in recent years. Theron deserves recognition for her effort too, but not just because of the makeup and wardrobe. They're all splendid. Makeup has shaved her brows to a Mona Lisa extent and turned her face just blotchy enough and given her a raggedy set of teeth.

But that's not all that has made her performance as the central character so memorable. (She's in almost every frame.) And it isn't the thirty or so pounds that she put on for the role either. What's so homeric about that? I can put on thirty pounds without blinking an eye, and enjoy doing it. Heck, I can put on forty or fifty if she wants to get into a peeing contest. No -- it's Theron herself who MAKES the character. She's great, particularly in her physical manifestation of Lee -- her body language, for instance. Instead of coasting through the role, she animates it. The way she struts around with her shoulders thrown back and her face down, emphasizing her several chins and the girth of her neck. Maybe it takes a profession ballerina to figure out these little techniques. Her voice isn't as coarse as that of a hooker who constantly puffs on cigarettes, but Theron does what she can with her own. She overcomes her native South African speech with no trouble and introduces us to a breathless bravado that she's never used on screen before -- not that I know of.

Her movements, her speech, her dreams, are filled with a desperate illusion that doesn't exactly make us feel sorry for her but does make us worry for her -- that she might, for instance, start screaming at any minute and never stop. A nerve-racking picture of a ruined soul.

Is it worth seeing? Absolutely. You won't learn too much about how Aileen Wournos turned into the person she did. Even the narrative itself is a little confusing at time, so that you can't be sure where Lee and Selby are at given moments. But it's Hollywood professionalism at one of its rare high points. It's made by a mature team for an audience of adults. Refreshing.

"Monster" is, overall, one of the saddest films ever, and one which doesn't step back at the view of the darkest side of existence: the fact that there are people who will lead their entire life without one single break, without any long-lasting achievements, success, or happiness. The title suits the story very well -there are many possible interpretations, but I personally like to read it as the description of what Aileen Wuornos's life is: a monster. There's nothing remotely nice in this story about her, and when she seems to have accomplished something, there's this feeling of impending doom -we know that it isn't meant to last long. The story is told by Aileen herself, in a very sarcastic and cynical tone, and she proves how adagios like "all you need is love and self-confidence" are just nice words, empty formulas with no real ground.

The film offers a handful of good messages. For example, I find it very interesting that it doesn't chalk all that misery up to life's natural lack of any justice, so that Aileen doesn't appear as just a victim of circumstances, as she says in one moment of the film; instead, the film shows that Aileen often has the option to act one way or the other, and she makes a decision. It could have been different, she could have picked the other option, but she knows what she is doing and she gives many reasons why she's doing so. The film sympathizes with her, but doesn't pity her; it just shows her actions and the motives that she feels are valid. It doesn't justify her. The viewer is left to reach his/her own conclusions. I find this one great achievement of the film, and one that makes a big difference between this film and many dramas that wallow in pity and justification of the character's deeds.

Like many have said, both Charlize Theron's and Christina Ricci's performance are flawless. I feel that Theron really deserved the Oscar. Ricci is great too, and this should be even more of note since she isn't given a lot of space to develop the character of Selby, Aileen's lover.

The film has its flaws, but it still is a rather impressive document, and one that certainly gives some food for thought.