 They're talking about a possible second Oscar for Charlize Theron for her performance in North Country as one of the first Minnesota female mine workers following a consent decree in the 1970s that forced the mine companies to hire women. Theron's character is based on one of the Minnesota women who eventually filed the first sexual harassment class-action suit in the United States. (The film is being compared with Norma Rae, Silkwood and Erin Brockovich.) Ann Hornaday writes in the Washington Post: "Theron, who won an Oscar last year for completely transforming herself to play the prostitute Aileen Wuornos [in Monster], once again proves to be a remarkable character actress, submerging her almost superhuman beauty." Likewise Roger Ebert remarks in the Chicago Sun-Times: "Here is another extraordinary role from an actress who has the beauty of a fashion model but has found resources within herself for these powerful roles about unglamorous women in the world of men." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star puts it more succinctly: "She's nothing short of spectacular here," he writes. Nevertheless, the movie itself, by and large, does not come off as well as the actress who stars in it. Kenneth Turan remarks in the Los Angeles Times that while the events in the movie actually occurred, they feel "relentlessly contrived." He concludes: "While it's a truism that movies have to take dramatic license to make complex stories fit into finite time frames, it is depressing to come across a movie whose over-eagerness to convince us makes us reject rather than embrace it." And Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal laments that the film winds up as "a long, slow slog through what could have been, and should have been, a more absorbing story." |
