An intense story of flawed people in a small town who experience loss and are brought together by fate or circumstance or whatever you want to call it. You could cut the tension in the theater with the proverbial knife, and there was no telling how things would unfold. Very unpleasant to watch in places, also very steamy (wondering how this escaped an NC-17). Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry are great. Not recommended if you want an entertaining 2-hour "diversion".

------------------
- dave
I want that North American cable deal!
 

"Monsters Ball" is a disturbing film and means to be that way from the void-like feel you get right off from the opening titles and the sort of ghost like life Hank Grotowski leads. The audience learns early on that he has one seriously screwed up "family" where showing anything like care for another person is deemed as weakness. His father (Peter Boyle) is racist and sexist. His son, Sonny (played by Heath Ledger) shows the emotional toll paid for having such an empty and hateful family. Hank is made to pay for his sins of being a bad father.

The story takes an unlikely turn in circumstance when Hank meets and befriends Leticia Musgrove, who coincidentally is the wife of a death row inmate he guarded. The friendship turns into one of forbidden love between race and class. They're only united out of intense loss and pain. Even then, the union seems frought with a lot of risk. That's no surprise given how emotionally unhealthy the principal characters seem to be. But viewers do get hope in that things like love and passion can manage to spark in some very morbid places and morbid hearts. I thought it was a clever story move to portray Sonny's hotel room encounter with a call girl in a very cold and clinical fashion. It turns into a good juxtaposition to the real passion happening later in the story. The only area where I can fault "Monsters Ball" is in having some story event lines that come off a little too convenient to get Hank and Leticia together. And some areas seem to quickly "resolved". I can't really go into specifics without spoiling parts of the story. Let's just say there were some possibilities in the story that were strangely left unexplored. I did really like the ambiguous ending. That's how life really plays. Nothing gets wrapped up nice and neat, and maybe that tells us to appreciate the fleeting times we have with those we love.

Show technical quality: very good, at least in terms of hardware. I watched the film in scope and DTS-6 on screen #2 (one of the smaller ones in the theater). The print was in very good condition after several weeks of play (no scratches and hardly a speck of dust). I do wish the cinematography was better. Certainly this is a gritty movie, but the Super35 photography was not only grainy, but the image quality was blurry even though you could see the film grain sharply. It reminded me of some underlit 16mm shows. I actually think this film would have been better shot in 1.85:1. The sound quality was good for the subject matter. Even though "Monsters Ball" features a quad format print (which is rare for a Lion's Gate release), much of the digital sound stays up on the front stage with just a little ambient audio happening in the surrounds. The music score seemed to be one of the few things I heard all around in the speakers.