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MONSTER
by Peter Sobczynski

January 9, 2004

1/2 (out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Bubba Baker. Directed by: Patty Jenkins. MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and sexual content, and for pervasive language. Distributor: Newmarket Films

It is one of the stranger paradoxes that makes up everyday life in modern-day Hollywood that while an actress generally needs to be attractive in order to become successful, the only way that she can then be taken seriously as an actress is to then take a role in which she has to look dowdy and deglamourized. If you want proof, just look at the women who have taken home the Best Actress Oscar for the last four year. Hilary Swank won for her cross-dressing turn in "Boys Don’t Cry", Julia Roberts took the prize for her white-trash affections in "Erin Brockovich" and Halle Berry did the same the next year for "Monster’s Ball". Even Nicole Kidman, whose performances in "Portrait of a Lady", "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Moulin Rouge" showed her to be one of the most versatile actresses around, didn’t get her award until she took off the makeup, slapped on a fake nose and played a glum-faced version of Virginia Woolf in "The Hours".

This year’s leader in the anti-beauty contest appears to be Charlize Theron. For the last few years, she has been steadily appearing in any number of films (she was the best thing about "The Cider House Rules" and stole no less than two Woody Allen films-still an achievement even if the films in question were "Celebrity" and "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion") and has always come off as an interesting performer-the kind who can usually liven up any film with intelligent acting choices, raw charisma and, yes, her sheer staggering beauty. However, in "Monster", she has taken away the latter by gaining weight and making up her face in order to play serial killer Aileen Wuronos and inevitably, she has been praised to the high heavens by critics who have previously dismissed her as just another pretty face. As a result, she is now considered to be the front-runner for the Best Actress Oscar (no doubt helped by the fact that there were no female roles of any consequence in "Return of the King").

Aileen Wuronos, for those who don’t know, was a trailer-trash prostitute working the Southeast who was sentenced to death (and finally executed last year) for killing seven of her clients over a period of time during the 1980’s. Because female serial killers were (and still are) a relative rarity, her story became a hot commodity in the media and even as she was going to trial, she was going through offers from Hollywood to tell her story-documentarian Nick Broomfield captured the frenzy in "Aileen Wuronos: The Selling of a Serial Killer", the first of two films he made about her case (the second is due for release in Chicago in February). However, anyone going to "Monster" for a full look at the case and the aftermath will be disappointed because "Monster" ends as she is finally apprehended. Instead, it concentrates on her life from the moment when, despondent and on the brink of suicide, she meets Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a young woman who has been sent to live with relatives by her religious parents in the hope that they will "cure" her of her lesbianism. Selby is fascinated with Aileen and before long, the two fall in love and begin to construct grand plans for the future. One night, while trying to raise money for a fancy night out with Selby, Aileen is brutally assaulted by a creep client and, in a blind fury, kills him and steals his wallet. When nothing comes of it, she feels elation over the fact that she has finally triumphed in something and continues to do in her johns until a combination of sloppiness and bad luck leads to her capture.

The problem with "Monster" is that debuting writer-director Patty Jenkins clearly sympathizes with Wuronos-whom she portrays from the start as a victim-without ever quite coming to grips with the fact that she was pretty much a monster. Except for the final one, all of her victims are portrayed as ugly, slobbering monsters who frankly deserves to die. And just so that we understand that Wuronos is a compassionate serial-killing prostitute, we are even treated to a scene where she decides not to kill someone simply because he is a fat, stuttering virgin and to whack him might make her seem unsympathetic. I’m not saying that the people that Wuronos killed were angels but to portray them simply as one-dimensional monsters in order to make someone else seem like less of a one-dimensional monster seems like a cheap way to curry favor with the audience. Also, by playing up Wuronos as a victim of circumstances, it diminishes the cunning and ferocious intelligence that she had to have had in order to continue her spree for as long as she did.

To her credit, Theron invests the character with the kind of depth and intelligence that the screenplay lacks and while her look is never quite convincing (she never fully disappears in the way that Hilary Swank did in "Boys Don’t Cry"-possibly because Swank was an unknown while Theron is a familiar face), her performance definitely is. However, having admired her work greatly in many other films, her performance in "Monster" is not quite the revelation that it seems to be for others and, as a result, it doesn’t quite make up for some of the other deficiencies (such as a surprisingly weak performance by Ricci, who never comes off as anything more than a cipher in the underwritten role of Selby).

One of my all-time favorite movies is Terrence Malick’s "Badlands", a film based on the lives of serial killer Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend/accomplice. This was an incredibly powerful film that managed to humanize a predatory monster while never allowing viewers to forget the enormity of his acts-thanks to Malick’s script and direction and the exemplary performances by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in the leads. By comparison, I have seen "Monster" twice now and, aside from my admiration for Theron’s work, I remain curiously unmoved by it. The best thing I can say about the film is that hopefully the acclaim and awards that Theron has been receiving will finally allow her the chance to grab some better scripts and do the performances that she has long been capable of delivering. That way, she can prove that she is more than just another ugly face.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.