MONSTER

Monster
Charlize Theron
- Aileen Wuornos
Christina Ricci
-
Bruce Dern
-
Charlize Theron gained a fair amount of weight (reports vary from 16 to 25 pounds) for her depiction of Aileen Wuornos, which was supplemented by extensive makeup to duplicate Wuornos' hardened looks. You can see images of Theron as Wuornos over at ETOnline and DailyDigest.net (reprinted from "Entertainment Weekly").
-
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
"Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci are monstrously good." more...

Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
"What Charlize Theron achieves in Patty Jenkins' Monster isn't a performance but an embodiment." more...


Cincinnati Enquirer
Margaret A. McGurk
"...creates a harrowing effect, thanks to Charlize Theron's astounding performance..." more...

E! Online
"Theron's achievement is a wonder, no doubt. The rest of this movie, however, can be kicked to the curb." more...

filmcritic.com
Chris Barsanti
"...this is a film with a story, concerned much less with shocking audiences than with showing how a brutalized childhood can result in a brutal adult." more...

Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
"A tough, disturbing film that doesn't shed enough light on its psychopathic anti-hero." more...

New York Times
Stephen Holden
"The emotional intensity of her (Charlize Theron) unforgettable performance recalls Hilary Swank's Oscar-winning turn in Boys Don't Cry..." more...

ReelViews
James Berardinelli
"Few with open minds will leave

To play Aileen Wuornos, the real-life prostitute and serial killer who was executed in 2002, Charlize Theron put on
thirty pounds and endured an hour and a half of attention each shooting day from the makeup artist Toni G.
What’s remarkable about the film is not just Theron’s transformation into a half-mad, beaten-up prostitute,
but the disciplined performance that she gives. The actress twitches and shrugs as if her tendons were directed
by will alone. She’s telling the world to kiss off, yet, inevitably, she’s reduced to sticking out her thumb on the
highway in search of a paying customer. When a sadistic client abuses her, she snaps, empties a revolver into
his chest, and lets out a war whoop of triumph. The moment is truly frightening. Theron’s ferocity pushes the
material over the top, but her tenderness—the flashes of gentleness and vulnerability—retrieves it from tabloid
exploitation and camp horror. With Christina Ricci as the petulant lower-middle-class girl who becomes
Wuornos’s lover. Written and directed by Patty Jenkins and shot in that bedraggled kingdom of chaos Central Florida



A Murderous Journey to Self-Destruction
MORE REVIEWS


2003 - USA - Drama
Critic's Pick: Reviewed by Stephen Holden


With a weather-beaten face and a prizefighter's swagger, Charlize Theron pulls off the year's most astounding screen
makeover in Patty Jenkins's film ''Monster.'' The disappearance of the cool and creamy blond star into the body of a ruddy,
bedraggled street person is more than a cosmetic stunt. more...


Model-turned-actress Charlize Theron leaves her glamorous image behind for this gritty drama, in which she plays a disturbed
prostitute who becomes a serial killer. Aileen Wuornos (Theron) was a woman who survived a
brutal and abusive childhood in Michigan to become a thick-skinned but emotionally damaged
adult. Homeless most of her life, Wuornos subsisted by working as a street prostitute; later, when
she was in Florida, down to her last five dollars and pondering suicide, she stopped into a bar for a beer.
There, Aileen met Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a woman in her early twenties who had been sent to live
with relatives after her Christian parents became aware of her lesbian lifestyle. Selby is immediately
attracted to Aileen, and while Aileen tells Selby she's never been in a lesbian relationship, she soon
finds herself equally infatuated with her. Selby runs away from her family and moves into a cheap hotel
with Aileen, who initially pays the bills by hooking. However, as their money runs low and Aileen finds
herself unable to land a regular job, tensions mount between the two. One night, after a john attacks her,
Aileen pulls a gun and kills the man. Although her first murder can be categorized as self-defense, Aileen's
loathing for the men who pay her for sex becomes so extreme that she begins killing her customers regardless
of their behavior. Meanwhile, Selby slowly becomes aware of the full extent of her lover's instability and the
bloody consequences of her actions. Monster was inspired by the true story of Aileen Wuornos, whose life and
death was chronicled in two documentaries by filmmaker Nick Broomfield, Aileen Wuornos:
The Selling of a Serial Killer, and Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer. -- Mark Deming