Unjustified

Rating: 2/10 (19 February 2005)

The filmmaker's avowed intention here was to compensate the media portrayal of Aileen Wuornos - which was supposedly designed to show the public just how evil and worthy of a death sentence she was - by honouring the complexity of a life.
Not what happens. Instead we get a complex life reduced to simplicity through an essentially melodramatic mode of presentation, all designed to justify the filmmaker's sympathetic response to the real courtroom events.
Everyone knows about Theron's performance. But every other element of the film suffers for it, orchestrated, as they are, to place the focus solely on Theron, and distract from what is really going on behind the camera. Without the strutting performance of Theron, this would be a TV movie.