As for myself, as Leticia rejoined Hank in the last shot of the movie, I was thinking about her as deeply and urgently as about any movie character I can remember.Read Full Review »
The movie holds you in thrall from first frame to last. Hatred is hatred unslaked. So is racism, ugliness, love, lust and sorrow.Read Full Review »
90
The New York Times: Dana Stevens
The raw intimacy of some of the scenes -- whether they take place at a diner, in the death house or in the bedroom -- is breathtaking.Read Full Review »
90
Washington Post: Stephen Hunter
The movie's stroke of sheer genius is its wondrous ending.Read Full Review »
90
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Kevin Thomas
Hank is but the latest of Thornton's strikingly taciturn characters in a whole string of movies, but for Berry, Leticia represents a big-screen breakthrough.Read Full Review »
88
ReelViews: James Berardinelli
This is as anti-Hollywood a film as I have seen in recent months, one which takes conventional plot ideas and uses them not to season a melodrama, but to enrich fully three-dimensional characters and create a forceful motion picture.Read Full Review »
80
Time: Richard Corliss
The cast is uniformly superb, and Marc Forster's attentive direction gives proper weight to each perplexing emotion. Strip away the strident melodrama, and you have this season's moodiest, most adult love story.Read Full Review »
75
Philadelphia Inquirer: Carrie Rickey
Hate, love, bigotry, empathy and chance are the uninvited guests at Monster's Ball.Read Full Review »
75
Boston Globe: Jay Carr
The kind of film that could easily be undone by its own high-minded ambitions and dissolve in a pall of uplift. But it stays the course and gives the season two of its notable performances.Read Full Review »
Hotmail
