After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard re-examines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard re-examines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard re-examines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.
- Won 1 Oscar
- 15 wins & 23 nominations total
Yasiin Bey
- Ryrus Cooper
- (as Mos Def)
Sean 'Diddy' Combs
- Lawrence Musgrove
- (as Sean Combs)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDuring an interview, Halle Berry was asked if she felt her nudity and the sex scene were really necessary for the film. She replied "....without this scene, I think it would be a very different movie. I think it's a pivotal moment and from that moment on, you understand why these two people get together." She added that if being nude serves the part, she would be happy to disrobe again. "If another role affects me like this, and I feel it's something the character would do - then I'll use my body in way to best serve the character." The actress seems to favor nudity in real-life too. "If the world wouldn't persecute me, I'd take nude pictures every day of the week."
- GoofsThroughout the movie there are conflicting references to its being set in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Georgia.
- Quotes
Sonny Grotowski: You hate me. You hate me, don't you? Answer me! You hate me don't you!
Hank Grotowski: Yes, I hate you. Always have.
Sonny Grotowski: Well I've always loved you.
- Crazy creditsThanks to Sam, Austin, Gabrielle. Scott Lambert is thanked twice.
- Alternate versionsThe initial cut of the picture included more explicit footage during the sex scene between Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, which was trimmed down after the MPAA threatened to give the film a NC-17 rating. The uncut version premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 8, 2001. The R-rated US theatrical release is the cut version; the version released theatrically in Canada and most other countries is the uncut version.
- SoundtracksBroken Up and Blue
(1998)
Performed by Red Meat
Written by Jill Olson
Published by Olson Girl Publishing (ASCAP)
Administered by Bug Music, Inc.
Courtesy of Ranchero Records
Featured review
Disturbing, engaging work
This is the kind of gritty, fuzz-free reality drama that keeps you musing about it long past the ending credits. It is unsparing in its depiction of all the light and dark sides of the human psyche, from racism to passion to insularity and even corpulence, mounting these on a platform so stark and unambiguous that the audience is not left with many choices - the reactions evoked are exactly the ones intended to be evoked, oscillating between disgust, outrage, sympathy, tenderness and occasionally, even a surreptitious smile.
Most of the characters in the movie suffer somewhat from a lack of complexity, which is compensated for by casting them into circumstantial conflict to create the dramatic tension (a husband is electrocuted, a child dies, another child sends a bullet through his heart and into the couch behind, and so on). This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially because the remarkable performances (particularly from Halle Berry) validate this ploy. The exception to this, however, is the character of Hank Grotowski, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob succeeds in imparting a subtle gray shade to this seemingly cardboard-cutout poster-boy-for-the-old-bigoted-south character that makes you hesitate from accepting him at face value. Is this simply about a saturnine, jaded racist being transformed by true love? Well, yes, that's part of it - the obvious part. But something keeps nagging you, preventing you from accepting this linear, justifiable inference, making you want to probe deeper, discover the reasons he has turned out this way, and even, in a perverse way, rationalize them. Is it just the provincial social climate? Is it the long proximity to his bigoted dotard of a father (played admirably by Peter Boyle)? Is he really that way or is he simply going with the flow? No simple explanation seems satisfactory - and the credit for this questioning, this need for deconstruction, goes to Billy Bob's nuanced performance.
All in all, beside the fact that some of the scenes may unsettle the squeamish, and that some promising characters like that of Grotowski's dispirited, conflicted son Sonny (played by Heath Ledger) were knocked off too early, the picture satisfies most norms for a good cinema experience - it makes you think, weep, squirm, analyze, rationalize, everything but walk out before it is over. In other words, it is what good cinema is about.
Most of the characters in the movie suffer somewhat from a lack of complexity, which is compensated for by casting them into circumstantial conflict to create the dramatic tension (a husband is electrocuted, a child dies, another child sends a bullet through his heart and into the couch behind, and so on). This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially because the remarkable performances (particularly from Halle Berry) validate this ploy. The exception to this, however, is the character of Hank Grotowski, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob succeeds in imparting a subtle gray shade to this seemingly cardboard-cutout poster-boy-for-the-old-bigoted-south character that makes you hesitate from accepting him at face value. Is this simply about a saturnine, jaded racist being transformed by true love? Well, yes, that's part of it - the obvious part. But something keeps nagging you, preventing you from accepting this linear, justifiable inference, making you want to probe deeper, discover the reasons he has turned out this way, and even, in a perverse way, rationalize them. Is it just the provincial social climate? Is it the long proximity to his bigoted dotard of a father (played admirably by Peter Boyle)? Is he really that way or is he simply going with the flow? No simple explanation seems satisfactory - and the credit for this questioning, this need for deconstruction, goes to Billy Bob's nuanced performance.
All in all, beside the fact that some of the scenes may unsettle the squeamish, and that some promising characters like that of Grotowski's dispirited, conflicted son Sonny (played by Heath Ledger) were knocked off too early, the picture satisfies most norms for a good cinema experience - it makes you think, weep, squirm, analyze, rationalize, everything but walk out before it is over. In other words, it is what good cinema is about.
helpful•192
- Uqbar
- Apr 16, 2003
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $4,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $31,273,922
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $110,552
- Dec 30, 2001
- Gross worldwide
- $45,011,434
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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