Monster movie storyline. 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.
Monster is a 2003 biographical crime drama film written and directed by Patty Jenkins. The film is about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a former prostitute who was executed in Florida in 2002 for killing six men (she was not tried for a seventh murder) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Wuornos was played by Charlize Theron, and her semi-fictionalized lover, Selby Wall (based on Wuornos’s real-life girlfriend Tyria Moore), was played by Christina Ricci.
Theron received critical acclaim and won numerous awards for her portrayal, including the Academy Award for Best Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress.
vMonster (2004)
Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Annie Corley, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Marco St. John, Marc Macaulay, Scott Wilson
Screenplay by: Patty Jenkins
Production Design by: Edward T. McAvoy
Cinematography by: Steven Bernstein
Film Editing by: Arthur Coburn, Jane Kurson
Costume Design by: Rhona Meyers
Set Decoration by: Shawn R. McFall
Art Direction by: Orvis Rigsby
Music by: BT
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and sexual content, and for pervasive language.
Distributed by: Newmarket Films
Release Date: January 9, 2004
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