Product Description

Charlize Theron (The Italian Job Trapped) explodes in a magnetic Oscar®-winning (Best Actress 2003) performance as convicted killer Aileen Wuornos.Severely abused and unloved Aileen immersed herself in the dangerous world of highway prostitution...until she met Selby Wall (Christina Ricci Sleepy Hollow) a naive girl who was Aileen s last chance at a normal life. But ultimately all Aileen understood was violence and nobody imagined the nightmare that awaited the seven men standing in the way of her happiness. A critically-acclaimed film from writer/director Patty Jenkins. "Academy Award ®" and "Oscar ®" are the registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.System Requirements:Running Time: 118 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396055520 Manufacturer No: 05552

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #633 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.com
Critics have universally praised Charlize Theron's performance in Monster, and the praise, for once, is astonishingly deserved. The gorgeous star of The Italian Job and The Cider House Rules vanishes into the character of Aileen Wuornos, a real-life serial killer and prostitute who murdered at least seven men in Florida. Monster traces her relationship with a young woman named Selby (Christina Ricci, The Ice Storm, Buffalo 66), which intertwines with Wuornos's murder spree. This remarkable movie finds compassion for Wuornos but unflinchingly faces her brutal crimes; Theron expresses this woman's horrific life history without softening her terrifying, dead-eyed stare. This is a gripping, devastating performance, a physical and psychological transformation comparable to Robert DeNiro's in Raging Bull. The movie's moral and emotional complexity wouldn't succeed without this searing performance--but succeed it does, and it will stick with you for some time afterward. --Bret Fetzer

DVD features
Director Patty Jenkins is prominent in Monster's two above-average 15-minute featurettes. "Based on a True Story: The Making of Monster" combines news broadcast; interviews with Jenkins, Charlize Theron, and others; a look at Theron's makeup; and signs of Aileen Wuornos's real-life world, including her best friend and the real Last Resort bar. Jenkins and composer BT discuss the score in the other featurette, including how "the score was conceived from the ground up in 5.1" (the DVD's sound is all-enveloping) as well as the use of the hurdy-gurdy and the contribution of Journey's Steve Perry (even this featurette is in DTS). There's also a film-mixing demo, in which the viewer can add or subtract (but not change the levels of) the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a two-minute segment of the Funworld scene. Surprisingly there's no cross-promotion of the simultaneously released interview disc, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer. --David Horiuchi

From The New Yorker
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 scuzzy 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. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Hits like a sledgehammer!!!
Blood and Rain
Blood for the Masses

Monster
Based on a true story.

Written and Directed by Patty Jenkins
Starring Charlize Theron as Eileen Wuornos
Christine Ricci

Revewed By
B.L.Morgan

Rating: 5 out of 5

The first statement I have to say about Monster is that I did not enjoy watching this excellent movie. Monster is harsh and grim and almost painful viewing. It is also a true story. That in itself is what makes this important picture hard to look at.

Life can be terribly harsh and the world was not kind to Eileen Wuornos.

Brutally abused as a child and cast out at a young age into an uncaring world she turned to a life of highway prostitution. Her life became a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse and selling her body to guys who frequently beat her because that's what got them off. She accepted it all and didn't care until she fell in love with another woman.

Charlize Theron's portrait of a woman who will do anything, including murder, to keep her one chance at love alive is gut wrenching. She became this damaged woman. Theron won The Best Actress Academy Award for her role in Monster. She deserved it. Eileen Wuornos cannot and should not be forgiven for the crimes she committed but this movie does make you understand the hows and whys of what happened in her life.

Monster was graphic and tense and emotionally draining. It was a highly uncomfortable one hour and forty-nine minutes that I spent watching this film. I will never watch Monster again but I'm glad I did see it the one time.

Depressing Movie
Depressing movie, the kind you don't watch over and over.

That said, VIOLENCE is the IMMORAL use of physical, or psychological,
force. Neither a victim, nor a victimizer be. It was not a violent
act when David slew Goliath.

To call Aileen a "serial killer", is to say a "serial killer" is
somebody who kills more than one person, but not at the same time.
But I think when most people hear the phrase "serial killer" they
think of a monster, rather than somebody like Aileen, who comes
across as a victim who finally decides to protect herself by fighting
back. When sheep are being slaughtered, shall not a lamb choose to
roar? Does anybody seriously believe that the guys she killed did not
deserve to die? When David slew Goliath, it was not a violent act.

A "serial killer" in my opinion is somebody who enjoys killing.
Aileen did what she thought (felt) she had to do in order to save
herself from being preyed upon by monsters.

In comparison what US soldiers are doing in the middle east makes
no logical sense: Are they not "serial killers"? And what do you
call them who committed atrocities at "Abu Ghraib" prison?
"Abusive"? And do they not endorse genocide who put "support the
troops" bumper stickers on their vehicles? What is a "serial
killer"?

Bloodshed is abhorrent. A firefighter does not want to get burned,
but he allows the heat to touch him in order to save life. Sometimes,
somebody has to be "the vampire slayer", to get rid of the monsters.
Can you discern between the prey and the predators? Oscar Schindler
did so, during WW2, when he was surrounded by Nazis.

David slew Goliath, and eunuchs threw Jezebel out of a window.


The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked
and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
Psalm 11:5, KJV.

True Story of a Femal Serial Killer
Excellent movie about the real life actions of one of the few female serial killers. Very non-exploitative considering it's subject is a pair of lesbian lovers, one of which is an violent murderer. The characters are real, you can feel pity for them and their hard lives, but you also feel the very deserving sense of disgust that they earn for themselves. This reality is brought to the characters by the amazing acting of both Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci, with the infamous transformation of Theron who gain 20 lbs, wore fake teeth, and went sans makeup, bringing the "monster" of the film to life. If your interested in serial killers, true crime movies, or dramas dealing with ill-fated romances, then this is the movie for you...