Review of Sling Blade (1996) by Tomas T — 19 Aug 2010

B.Thornton proves that he can direct better than he can act. There is no doubt that this is a big movie for B.Thornton and it is better than average no question about it, it just has about much annoying aspects in it than it has great ones.

Sling Blade tells a story of a long time retarded convict who is literally forced back to society that he does not belong to after ending a cruel relationship with his mother in a bloody manner. After being released, he meets up with good willed folks who are being terrorised by a redneck hillbilly and the rest is pretty much guessable. Here is where the gripes come in, Sling Blade is crawling slow, which is good for character developing movies which Sling Blade is supposed to be, but that is hardly what one gets here as Thornton's retarded character can be read like a book after 5 minutes of running time. Sure the sympathy level is high all the time, but Thornton's character alone cannot carry the epic lasting 2h 20min all alone, he becomes repeating. There are good scenes all over the movie, but the movie is missing that something. Big Plot twist is not the answer here in slow paced movie like this, but my guess is that much more time tuning the script and editing the movie could have doned it some good.

Giving so much screen time for the director of the movie is always like a two way street, with Sling Blade B.Thornton does not have what it takes and sadly so.