Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Heath Ledger, Peter Boyle
Director: Marc Forster
The film: A breakthrough performance from the normally light-weight Halle Berry was the first thing that attracted attention to Monster's Ball. The second was the intense sex scenes she shares with Billy Bob Thornton. And both are highlights of what is a disturbing but gripping drama.
Thornton stars as Hank, a racist prison guard given the last watch over the condemned Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Coombs). Also on that last watch is Hank's son Sonny (Heath Ledger) and the tension between the pair is palpable. They share a house with Hank's father Buck (Peter Boyle), a bigoted old man who is dying of emphysema. As you can tell, life in general in this film is not exactly a bundle of laughs.
When tragedy strikes Hank he completely loses the plot. He quits work and falls into depression and it is then that he runs into Letica (Berry), a down-and-out single mother who just happens to be Musgrove's widow. When Letica suffers a further loss, the pair are thrown together and forced to come to terms with their relationship - and the changes they are each going through.
While there are some aspects of the script here that need more development - why, for instance, there is so much anger between Hank and Sonny - the remarkable efforts from Berry and Thornton lift it all well above the ordinary. Berry's Oscar-winning effort is bubbling to the boil with passion and anger while there's no one better than Thornton at playing a man mired in misery. And a welcome return to the big screen for Boyle rounds out an impressive second effort from director Marc Forster.