Formerly EFL teacher and IT consultant, now relocated to Marseille, France. Final year biochemistry ...
Formerly EFL teacher and IT consultant, now relocated to Marseille, France. Final year biochemistry student, my passions are perfumery and making my own natural cosmetics / body care products.
Member since:12.12.2007
Reviews:148
Members who trust:147
Classification: 18
Introduction
My boyfriend is an avid movie fan and manages to find great pieces of cinema often just by browsing in the dvd shops. He picked this title up yesterday and we watched it last night. I wondered how come I had never heard of movie despite the publicity of the real events and one with such an outstanding perfomance.
Synopsis
It's indeed very hard not to spoil the plot if the movie is based on the story of 'America's first female serial killer' as Aileen Wuornos has been referred to in the media and also in The Guiness World Book of Records. Lee (as Aileen is called in the movie) is a prostitute who is on the verge of rapidly going down the gutter for good when she meets a young girl. She desperately grabs at her last chance of quitting and having a normal life she's never had.
Performance
Lee is played by Charlize Theron (The Italian Job, The Devil's Advocate, Hancock) who even had a body transformation to be able to portray the battered look of Aileen to the point she's barely recognisable. Her acting is phenomenal, her facial expressions or rather contortions were the spitting image of a manic hooker and a nervous wreck rolled into one. She won the Oscar's Best Actress award for her perfomrance. Christina Ricca plays Lee's young partner called Selby in an equally convincing role, though not at all portrayed after the real person either physically or in character.
Viewing experience
Apart from the occasional tender moments between the two protagnists, the film is violent from start to finish. Non-stop swearing, confrontation and a sense of of constant danger characterise the atmosphere in which two desperate and lost souls trying to grab at their diminishing choices while only one is them is actually aware of it. There isn't much happening in terms of character or plot development, the events cascade rather rapidly and bring blow after blow to the hasty ending. It's certainly not for the faint hearted to watch, some of the more violent and graphic ones made me cringe with dismay. I did cry at the end, while the most emotionally charged moments of the movie were played out.
Conclusion
I do not feel that having prior knowledge of the plot would make watching the movie any less intense. The reason for that is the events are portrayed with a bias, namely from Aileen's point of view and not e.g from the victims' family or the press who obviously did their best to portray her as a monster. Fair enough, I do not condone her acts in the slightest. The film carries a lot stronger point than that of her 'circumstances' that forced her to do what she did as Aileen referred to in a documentary made about her. For me it is a violence makes violence and evil creates more evil. A disturbing, but powerful movie, recommended.
Price / where to buy
Amazon: Used from £0.55 or new (2 DVDs edition) for £19.99
DVD Features
Subtitles
This is a Format: Region 2 DVD and we watched it on my boyfriend's iMac so cannot comment on the quality of the Dolby sound that came with the DVD. However some of the conversations in the movie turned quite soft sometimes so we had turned on the English subtitles (the only subtitles available on our copy.) Funnily, the subtitles missed most of these conversations and had no subtitles on when there was clearly some talking going on. On other occasions, the subtitles had spelling mistakes in them or showed a different word altogether that sometimes did not even make sense in the context.
Extras
We had our copy as a single DVD format with no trailers and additional featurettes.
Thanks for reading.
İpowered by lillybee also posted on dooyoo
Summary: A powerful but disturbing movie based on a true story
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
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Nov 4th, 2008
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