‘Monster’s Ball’ quietly gripping, unforgettable

In theaters

MONSTER’S BALL. Directed by Marc Forster. Written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. 108 minutes. Rated R.

With two major, unexpected twists buried deep within its script, a superb, Academy Award-nominated performance from Halle Berry, and a director eager to peel away the layers of bigotry, racism and hate ingrained in a small Georgia town, Marc Forster’s “Monster’s Ball” is one of those rare contemporary movies that lingers in the mind and doesn’t let go.

The story itself is like a bruise, but don’t expect it to heal.

“Monster’s Ball” remains open and raw to the end, leaving audiences to sort out for themselves all that has taken place without any nudging from Forster or assistance from Milo Addica’s and Will Rokos’ understated script.

The film stars Billy Bob Thornton as Hank Grotowski, a death row corrections officer who lives with his mean-spirited father, Buck (Peter Boyle) – a former corrections officer himself and now an unapologetic racist and misogynist – in a home that’s as battered and as broken as their own lives and relationship.

Living with them is Hank’s son, Sonny (Heath Ledger), who unwittingly shares his father’s favorite prostitute and works alongside him on death row.

Together, these three generations of men represent a changing South, with the roots of racism buried less deep in Sonny, a sensitive, brooding young man who unleashes the full weight of his father’s rage when he becomes physically ill just moments before putting a black man (Sean Combs) to death by electrocution.

Furious that his son would ruin this man’s last walk, Hank explodes, which leads to a jarring series of events that can’t be revealed here.

For most directors, capturing the Grotowskis’ story would have been ambitious enough. But Forster has other ideas in mind, changing his film’s course and tone by interweaving the lives of Leticia (Berry) and her morbidly obese son, Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun), into the mix.

It was Leticia’s husband and Tyrell’s father whom Hank executed, though no one immediately knows this. When tragedy pulls Hank and Leticia together, it seems that this black woman who doesn’t trust white men – and this white man who has been taught to hate blacks and women – are about to move into a life-altering interracial affair. In each other, they recognize a loneliness and a despair that cross color lines.

It’s what they choose to do with that recognition, and how they come to terms with what it could potentially mean for the rest of their lives, that turns “Monster’s Ball” into such a quietly gripping, unforgettable film.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

(March 5)

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg. 145 minutes. Rated PG-13.

In 1969, Brian Aldiss, a science fiction writer of some note, wrote “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” a haunting short story about a boy forced to face the real reason his mother doesn’t love him: He’s a robot, something the boy didn’t know.

In 1983, Stanley Kubrick optioned the piece, toiled over it for more than a dozen years, and decided, at some point, to introduce a “Pinocchio”-like element, favoring the idea that machines and humans can never become one – and neither should this little boy.

Enter Steven Spielberg, a friend of Kubrick’s, who agreed to take the reins when Kubrick died in 1999. Working from Kubrick’s notes and storyboards, Spielberg wrote the script himself, expanding its themes to serve his own interests.

For “A.I.,” that’s where things get tricky. With each director possessing such entirely different mind-sets and sensibilities, was a collaboration between the icy Kubrick and the warm-and-fuzzy Spielberg a good thing?

The answer depends on what’s drawing you to the film. If you’re only interested in seeing a good Spielberg movie, wait for this month’s rerelease of “E.T.” But if you’re interested in witnessing the curious wreckage left in the wake of two great directors colliding on screen, “A.I.” is absolutely worth seeing.

With Haley Joel Osment as David, a robotic boy who longs to be human, and Jude Law in an astonishing performance as Gigolo Joe, a robot built purely for sex who initiates David into the wilds of a cruel world, “A.I.” is a fascinating mess that stands as a weird hybrid of each director’s personal style.

Technically strong yet emotionally sterile, it raises a handful of questions about the meaning of love and our responsibility to those high-tech toys we’ll one day create in our own images, but it ultimately finds Spielberg reaching too hard to honor Kubrick’s vision as well as his own.

Indeed, by the final reel, Spielberg wants us to weep, while Kubrick wants us to cast a clinical eye and think. Audiences will find a middle ground, but it won’t fully satisfy.

Grade: B-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on Fridays on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Daily,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.