Riveting performance by Theron

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2004)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** We have all seen serial killer films before and they usually have the lead actor come across as some unbelievable psychopath but this is a film that takes the rare approach of showing us the person who became a killer. It doesn't make any excuses for her actions but it does take an extremely honest and realistic view of a woman who did become a monster. Story is about Aileen Wournos (Charlize Theron) who is a Florida prostitute and down to her last five bucks when she stumbles into a gay bar. While sitting there she meets Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) who is an 18 year old lesbian clumsily looking for someone to talk to. After a nervous start the two of them hit it off but Selby is scheduled to go back to Ohio in a few days so Aileen tries to convince her to stay. Aileen walks the interstate and picks up johns and one night she is parked in the woods with a man who beats her viciously and ties her up. He assaults her with a tire iron until she manages to get free where she finds his pistol in the front seat and kills him with it. She disposes of the body and takes his money and car and when she shows Selby the amount of cash she has and the car this convinces her to stay with Aileen. They rent a rundown house where they live together and after failing to find a normal job Aileen goes back to hooking. Aileen prides herself as the bread winner and in order to keep her and Selby together she ends up murdering many other men.
*****SPOILER ALERT*****
Aileen ends up murdering seven different men and she tells Selby only about the first one which was in self defense. Aileen hates being a hooker and one night she and her friend Thomas (Bruce Dern) both tell each other how life doesn't give you any choices but you do what you have to do in order to survive. One day Selby crashes the car where an elderly couple gets a good look at them and when the police finally figure out that it must be a prostitute committing the murders a composite drawing of the two of them is shown on television and this leads to Aileen's capture.
This film was directed by Patty Jenkins who is making her directorial debut and she does a good job of just allowing the film to focus in on Theron's portrayal. This film doesn't do anything special or stylistic and that's a good thing because it doesn't need to. It shows us a character that really never had much of a chance in life and we do understand her anger and confusion at the world. After a nightmare of a childhood she becomes this pitiful person who is useless to society. The performance of Theron is one that will be talked about for many years to come and its done with an incredible amount of understanding for the characters anger. Not for a second did Theron lose focus as Aileen and she stays in character every moment in the film. I have heard a lot of talk about the make-up that Theron wears for the film and while it is an amazing job her performance is not based from this. Theron's body movement is a big part of the film with the unsteady walk to the wild glare in her dark eyes. The dark eyes that she bares to the screen in certain scenes are ones that show a lifetime of hurt and pain. I was truly mesmerized by the stares of anger and this has nothing to do with make-up. It's a gut wrenching performance that is easily the best of the year and Theron finally has received the role that proves herself as a wonderful actress. Even though Ricci's character could have been written with more depth I still thought she was excellent as the naive lover of Aileen. She plays a person that has been told what to do all of her life and the one time that she decides to think for herself is to help the police incriminate her lover. This film takes an honest look at a sordid character and while its approach is sometimes pedestrian it makes the right decision to allow the actors to pick up the slack. In this case it's a performance of stunningly raw emotion.