Southern discomfort

>> Monster’s Ball is well-acted but unbelievable

by MATTHEW HAYS

Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry lord over Monster’s Ball. They’re both fantastic in the lead roles, as polar opposites who somehow end up lovers. It’s a showpiece that shows up the two thespians’ strengths. She’s thought of as a conventional screen star who here proves to be anything but common. He’s the oddball who again proves his mettle as both a character actor and leading man.

Sadly, it’s the film’s script that doesn’t quite live up to the high standards the actors set. Screenwriters Will Rokos and Milo Addica had a great idea: have a racist bigot (Thornton) somehow fall into unusual circumstances with a young black woman (Berry) and, despite their sizable differences, end up in the throes of soul-saving romance. Rokos and Addica also work to keep the dialogue in Monster’s Ball to a distinct minimum. This too is a plus, something that worked so well in Bertolucci’s Besieged, a movie virtually dialogue-free.

A challenging concept, great actors. But consider what we, the audience, are supposed to buy. At film’s opening, Thornton is a hardened, nasty, evil sonofabitch, a man who shoots rounds of his shot gun into the air to scare black children off his property. His job, a vocation his father held and his son also holds, involves accompanying men to the gas chamber.
So we take it Thornton is a nasty fella. But after something very, very dramatic happens, he changes. And while I don’t want to give away key plot points here, I do find the idea that something this traumatic would cause a big life change believable. But change this big? Soon, Thornton is romancing Berry, convinced she’s the girl for him and, as fate would have it, that they’re mutual saviours.

There are some marvellous things about Monster’s Ball, but I confess to being utterly unconvinced of such broad shifts in character evolution mid-way through such a film. Too bad—I wanted to like this movie. But the bumpy transition Thornton is forced to carry is more than enough to sink this Monster’s Ball. :

Monster’s Ball opens Friday, Feb. 15