'Monster's Ball' misses so many opportunities to engage, that, by the end, a breath of relief that this futile story has finally come to end is just about the only reward you'll get out of it. Other than some technical aspects of it, this lukewarm and pedestrian film has little to recommend it.
Notoriously failing to find its focus, 'MB' flirts with various humane and social issues (death raw, inter-racial affair), but miraculously ends without an honest attempt to tackle any of them. Where else but in Hollywood, could you get away with the fact that central conflict of the movie gets introduced minutes before the movie ends!?
The impotency revealed in filmmaker's resolution of it permeates the whole movie.
Notoriously failing to find its focus, 'MB' flirts with various humane and social issues (death raw, inter-racial affair), but miraculously ends without an honest attempt to tackle any of them. Where else but in Hollywood, could you get away with the fact that central conflict of the movie gets introduced minutes before the movie ends!?
The impotency revealed in filmmaker's resolution of it permeates the whole movie.