Charlize Theron stars as Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was executed in Florida for killing seven men during the 1980s; Christina Ricci plays her girlfriend, Selby Wall; and Bruce Dern is cast as her friend Thomas, who tries to protect her in the end.
In a revelatory performance, Charlize Theron stars in the shocking and moving true-life story of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute executed last year in Florida after being convicted of murdering six men. While Wuornos confessed to the six murders, including a policeman, she claimed to have killed only in self-defense, resisting violent assaults while working as a prostitute.
Bravely burrowing beneath the tabloid headlines about America’s first female serial killer—and the media’s sordid designation of Wuornos as an unrepentant monster—in the midst of the horrors and pathologies, first-time writer-director Patty Jenkins unearths an unlikely love story between two misfits.
Nearing suicidal despair, Wuornos wanders into a Florida bar, where she meets Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), a young woman sent by her parents to live with an aunt in order to “cure her homosexuality.”
Wuornos—victim of a tragic, abusive upbringing—quickly falls in love, and clings to Selby like a life preserver. Unable to find a legitimate job but desperate to sustain her relationship with Selby, Wuornos continues working as a prostitute. When one of her johns turns violent, Wuornos shoots the man in self-defense; the first in her tragic string of killings.
Shot in many of the actual locations where Wuornos committed her crimes between 1989-90, in its grittiness, verisimilitude, and hard-won empathy for its antihero, Monster is reminiscent of the great, iconoclastic American films of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Co-starring Bruce Dern, Monster succeeds as searing social commentary, road movie, and, most profoundly, as love story.
Theron’s ferocious, fully-committed work—astounding physical transformation matched by unerring psychological acuity—is sure to surprise audiences familiar with her work, and in writer-director Jenkins, Monster heralds a major new filmmaking talent.
Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Scott Wilson, Lee Tergesen, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Annie Corley, Marco St. John
Screenplay by: Patty Jenkins
Cinematography by: Steven Bernstein
Film Editing by: Arthur Coburn, Jane Kurson
Music by: BT
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, sexual content, pervasive language.
Studio: Newmarket Films
Release Date: December 26, 2003
