Review of Sling Blade (1996) by Van R — 26 May 2010

Small, independently produced cinematic gems such as Billy Bob Thornton's "Sling Blade" rarely have a chance to shine when competing for big-screen space in the multiplexes against those luminous, mega-budgeted, celebrity studded Hollywood features. In the same category, equally brilliant but dark-minded thrillers such as "Fargo" and "Lone Star" seldom find their audiences until they take up shelf space at your local video rental store. Most moviegoers simply don't know what they've missed because these movies don't have the giant advertising budgets of "Star Wars" or "Jerry Maguire." Sadly, like "Fargo" and "Lone Star," "Sling Blade" may suffer a similar demise. This is a real shame because these little movies deserve a better fate.

Basically, if you never watched another movie in a theatre, you should see "Sling Blade." This movie is that good! Comparatively, in Hollywood terms, "Sling Blade" crosses the goofy Tom Hanks' comedy "Forrest Gump" with the classic 1976 Robert De Niro psycho-chiller "Taxi Driver." If your tastes run to literature, the "Sling Blade" plot resembles something that Southern Gothic writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O'Conner might have cooked up.

When we meet Karl Childers (Billy Bob Thornton of "On Deadly Ground"), he is about to be released from the state mental hospital. A retarded adult, Karl was committed when he was a child for hacking up his mother and her illicit lover with a sling blade. Our cretinous hero thought that his mama was being raped by a neighbor, when she was actually cheating on her husband. Karl has been behind bars for 25 years, so life in the free world holds little prospect for him. Although he wants to remain in the state hospital, the warden refuses to let him.

Karl looks harmless enough. He wears his britches too high and his socks too low. He's a gravel-voiced, mild-mannered brute that learned to read the Bible and has a flair for fixing small motors. The warden of the state hospital, Jerry Woolridge (James Hampton of "The Longest Yard") finds him work at a repair shop in a rural town that could double for Andy Griffith's Mayberry. Karl befriends a fatherless youngster, Frank Wheatley (Lucas Black) and the boy's homely mother Linda Wheatley (Natalie Canerday of "Biloxi Blues"). She dates a drunken boyfriend, Dole Hargraves (Dwight Yoakum) who not only cheats on her but enjoys abusing her. At her son's request, Linda lets Karl bunk in their garage because Frank likes the way Karl talks. "His voice," Linda observes, "sounds like a race track." Karl and Linda's boyfriend Doyle don't see eye to eye. Eventually, the mean-spirited beau evicts Karl, but like Tom Hanks' retarded by savvy Forrest Gump character, Billy Bob Thornton's Karl conceals more common sense than most folks can imagine. Karl knows the vile Doyle is a snake, and Karl vows to protect young Frank and Frank's innocent mother from him.

The eccentric "Sling Blade" cast could be refugees from TV's "Hee Haw." Incredibly enough, their Southern accents sound as genuine as their performances are sincere. Karl dates a monstrous cow of a woman who constantly complains about her feet. In a role reversal, she brings Karl the bouquet of flowers. Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall of "The Godfather" has a cameo has Karl's chair-ridden, good-for-nothing father who made him bury his prematurely born younger brother in a shoe box out in the backyard. Comedian John Ritter of the vintage ABC-TV sitcom "Three's Company" really stretches himself with an absolutely brilliant but low-key performance as Vaughan Cunningham, a bespectacled, pot-bellied homosexual. Ritter plays this difficult but outrageous role totally straight (pardon the pun), sparkling in a role that you'd never think he'd have the guts to accept. Although the other movie characters ridicule Ritter and his affair with the town mortician, the Billy Bob Thornton screenplay sympathizes with his character and shows him in a favorable light. County singer Dwight Yoakum drips pure evil as Linda's scummy boyfriend who carps on everybody for being less perfect that he is.

Thornton, a gifted character actor who has appeared in minor film parts, delivers a finely tuned performance that has justifiably earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Previously, Thornton played the nasty gambler in "Tombstone" and one of the short-lived, oil-rig villains in the Steven Seagal thriller "On Deadly Ground." Not only does Thornton excel as Karl, but he also penned the script (for which he has also received an Oscar nomination) and directed this wonderfully poignant story, too. "Sling Blade" is a rare visual treat with several nice touches cleverly woven into the either background or the foreground and Thornton lets his cast dominate the action. The scene where the teenage drives the drunken boyfriend out of the house is so convincingly depicted that you feel like an intruder eavesdropping on the real thing.

Perhaps what makes "Sling Blade" seem so authentic is that everything here could really happen. No special effects, no auto chases, or big action scenes clutter up this simply spun, but devastating evocative saga.