Monster's Ball

Released: 2001
Drama
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, Halle Berry
Director: Marc Foster
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated: R/NC-17 depending on which version you catch.  It's NOT for kids at all.  Strong language, violence, on screen deaths, sex, and lots of adult situations.

The breakdown:  A very heavy drama about family, racism, crime, love, and how individuals reexamine themselves and what they want after tragic events touch their lives.


This is a very emotionally heavy movie to watch and quite depressing.  With that said, it's an excellent movie that you should see if you like drama's.
Thornton plays a racist prison guard who works on death row.  His son who is not racist, played by Ledger, also begins working with him.  They are getting prepared to execute their latest prisoner, unfortunately played by Puff Daddy (Sean Combs).  Combs (or should I call him Daddy?) is just as terrible acting as he is rapping, but at least he dies in the movie.  Anyway, Thornton and Ledger's relationship is very very strained.  It seems like to Ledger he can't do anything as good as his father and this job is no different.  Combs is an "artist" and likes to draw.  He draws pictures of both Thornton and Ledger on his final night alive.  In prison, Thornton explains to his son, the prisoner gets to eat whatever he wants and kinda' do whatever he wants as his final hours come to an end.  They call this night the monster's ball.  As the execution hour arrives Ledger gets very sick (something his father strongly warned him not to do) and ends up throwing up along the hall to get the prisoner into the execution room.
The execution happens and Thornton then goes to the bathroom to humiliate and reprimand his son for getting emotional and sick.

WARNING!!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!

Combs character was married to Halle Berry and had an overweight son that came to visit him that day before he died.  Their relationship was very strained and Berry seemed to be distant from her husband.
Through a series of chance encounters Berry and Thornton repeatedly come to meet.  Berry's son dies in a tragic way and Thornton tries to help her through her grief by sleeping with her.  This leads to a relationship even though Thornton is racist.  Thornton's father, played incredibly cruelly by Peter Boyle, is even more racist and is a terrible human being.
I can't go too much farther without ruining the twists and turns of this movie, but I can honestly say there were a lot of things that happened that I never expected.
It was a very good movie, but very hard to watch.  It makes you sad, uncomfortable, disgusted, and you need to watch it all the way through to know what happens to all these characters.  I can easily say this is a strong character study and the journey of two characters evolving and changing along side each other.  Halle Berry won an Oscar for her performance though I don't understand why.  Her performance, in my opinion, was nothing special or moving.  I think any other decent actress could've done just as good or maybe better.
The actors that were phenomenal were Heath Ledger who played such a beautifully sad person so well, Peter Boyle who played a terrible racist, mean spirited person so so well, and Billy Bob Thornton, who I never liked and still don't, but he was very good in this particular role.

I give it my highest rating 5 out of 5 stars for surprises, thought-provoking drama, and an excellent unique story all the way around.  I even overlook actors I can't stand and one performance that really pales in comparison to some of the other actors.  You must see it if you like drama.