The easiest way for a movie star to gain critical acclaim for a role is to pack on the pounds, hide behind some hideous disguise, and play someone reprehensible. So Charlize Theron's performance in Monster, in which she puts on 30 pounds, covers her stunning face in blotchy makeup and fake bad teeth, and plays real-life, convicted serial murder Aileen Wuornos, is immediately suspect. The former model, known for lightweight Hollywood fare like The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Italian Job, is clearly making a bid to be taken seriously with the gritty and brutal Monster, but however calculated a move it is, she pulls it off.
Wuornos was executed in 2002 after 12 years on Florida's death row, convicted of killing seven men. Writer-director Patty Jenkins picks up her story as she's at her lowest, contemplating suicide, years of working as a roadside prostitute having taken their toll. Aileen inadvertently walks into a gay bar, ready to spend her last dollars drinking her troubles away, and meets shy lesbian Selby Wall (Christina Ricci). Selby's hiding out from her repressive, religious parents, and although Aileen's not gay, she allows Selby to buy her a few drinks.
Soon the two are tentatively exploring a new love, Aileen's first taste of genuine emotion in years. They plan to run away together, but Aileen is first beaten and raped by a john in a stark and brutal scene, saving herself only by killing her attacker. It's an obvious act of self-defense, but it sets Aileen on a destructive downward spiral, channeling her years of abuse and newfound sexual orientation into a preemptive condemnation of all men who engage her services, though none of her six subsequent victims is nearly as reprehensible as the first.
Jenkins does a superb job of providing balance in her portrayal of Aileen, who's initially sympathetic but evolves into something more complex, a killer who loses sight of why she's killing. Theron's performance is stunning, only occasionally showing flashes of Hannibal Lecter-style showiness; the move for respectability should pay off. Ricci is just as good in the much lower-profile role, embodying the confusion of a woman torn between love and morality. The narration gives the film just the right tone of dark comedy and turns what could have ended up a lurid sensationalist story into a rich portrait of life on the edge of society.