text: 'It's easy to kill a monster, but it's hard to kill a human being.'<br /><br />Set in St. Thomas Housing Project and Angola Prison in New Orleans, "Dead Man Walking" is the true story of Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon), a Louisiana nun Sister who befriended Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), a murderer and a rapist bound for a lethal injection machine for killing a teenage couple Sister Helen agrees to help the convict and to remain with him till the endan act never before attempted by a woman <br /><br />At their first meeting, Poncelet swears to the nun that his accomplice was the one who shot both of the kids and pleads her help for a new trial in order to convince the pardon board hearing to spare his life <br /><br />The film challenges the audience to actually give some thought to the human consequences of the death penalty, but gives voice to angry bereaved parents whose kids were shot, stabbed, raped, and left in the woods to die alone <br /><br />As Poncelet's execution looms closer and closer, his character is seen deceptively complex, harboring doubts about the rightness of what they were doing to him In one moment, we hear him sensitive asking for a lie detector test to let his mother know that he is innocent, in another we see him furious playing the victim, blaming the government, drugs, blacks, the kids for being there Poncelet never understood that he has robbed the Percys and the Delacroixs so much, giving them nothing but sorrow They are never going to see their children again, never going to hold them, to love them, to laugh with them <br /><br />In the scenes leading up to his execution, the death-row inmate drops his terrible facade and reveals his identity Luckily both Sarandon and Penn are here exceptionalcarrying out successfully an exquisite, tangible harmony of souls When Sarandon was looking at Penn, she was projecting compassionate eyes brimming with tears She asks him to visualize her as he dies ''I want the last thing you see in this world to be the face of love''in that moment, we truly believed that she'll be the face of love for him