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Monster
A disappointment. Charlize Theron's transformation into executed murderer Aileen Wuornos is a stunning achievement, but it's marooned in a film with little sense of how to tell a story. By the time we meet Aileen, she's already a deeply disturbed, hopelessly damaged soul from a lifetime of mistreatment and years of work as a prostitute. The action of the film, such as it is, consists of Aileen's halting efforts to form some sort of human bond with Selby Wall (an unusually subdued Christina Ricci) and her killing of several johns, most of whom are presented as either miscreants or losers. In a hint of what the film might have been, the final murder we witness is of a decent man who merely offered Aileen a ride, but ends up dead anyway because Aileen is so used to the ritual of exploitation that she naturally assumes that's how everyone will behave. Theron's portrayal of the emotions that wrack Aileen as she realizes that she's about to kill someone entirely innocent is brilliant, but it's one of the few moments where the script truly supports the performance, and it comes far too late in the film to accomplish much of anything.
The "monster" of the title is a reference to a giant ferris wheel that Aileen rode as a child. It's a mark of the script's laziness that, even when Aileen and Selby take a ride on a ferris wheel, the image doesn't connect with much of anything; it's plays as just another random incident.
M.
"Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything." -- Chinatown
"What kind of movies would there be if everyone in them had to do what we thought they should do?" -- Roger Ebert
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