Sling Blade

Sling Blade is a very well acted, well displayed, and interesting masterpiece. I just loved it from beginning to end.

First I would like to comment on the excellent acting across the board, especially the late John Ritter and Billy Bob Thornton's ensemble portrayal of Karl. I could not help but feel very attached to Karl from the opening scene, his release from the mental institution, his struggles with the outside world, and how he related to the town people. Sling Blade is one of those movies that I would love to sit down and talk about for hours with a friend. I would also love to hear others' perspectives about what made this movie great.

It seems that every scene was worked to perfection. From the lighting and camera's viewpoint to the acting and music. I enjoyed every scene, but thought that three really stood out. Without giving too much away, they are as follows. No spoilers here:

1. Inside the house after band practice where Karl does not move from the couch.

2. When Karl is visited at work and we see him make eye contact for the first time.

3. The scene where Karl is in the garage late at night. The chilling music really captures the mood. My heart was pounding during this one!

I hold Mr. Thornton to a very high respect. He created a masterpiece that is emotional, thrilling, dramatic, humorous, and entertaining.

I remember first watching Sling Blade and thinking, "Oh no, here is a Forest Gump copycat." After all, the main character, Karl (Billy Bob Thornton) was mentally challenged and they were in the South. In reality, that's where the similarities stopped, but I didn't know that at the time. The second detractor for me was Billy Bob Thornton. I had only seen Billy Bob in one movie before Sling Blade and that was Bad Santa (yes I saw Sling Blade for the first time that many years later) and I thought that movie was dreadful, hence my impression of Billy Bob was also negative.

Sling Blade was a welcome surprise. Billy Bob did an excellent job with the role and of course I was doubly surprised to see that he had written and directed the movie.

Sling Blade was terrific in its simplicity. Karl was a simple man, he lived with simple folks in a simple town. That's not to say that they were without problems. Karl's mental handicap, Linda Wheatley's (Natalie Canderday) man issues, Frank Wheatley's (Lucas Black) fatherless issues, Doyle's (Dwight Yoakam) drinking problem, et al. For the simplicity of it all it was simply perfect.

A magnificent film! Watching Billy Bob, I was reminded of Bo Radley (Robert Duvall)in To Kill a Mockingbird. The irony of seeing Duvall in Sling Blade made it that much more rewarding. Yes, it's true, the ending was inevitable, but so what? The journey to the end was what made this film the gem that it is. Dwight Yoakam made my skin crawl, and Lucas Black as little Frank brought out my motherhood instinct. Protect that boy, Karl! And he did. This had all the elements of a great film: an unselfish hero who brings about changes in the lives of others in a meaningful way. Granted, had his mental capabilities been greater he might have made another choice. Given the circumstances of the film, there was no other choice.

No film in recent years has held me as spellbound as SLING BLADE, written by BILLY BOB THORNTON (for which he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay), and starring the actor in a memorable role for which he was Oscar nominated but failed to win.

He becomes the character with such truth--and such emotional underplaying--that he makes the whole story even more moving than it would have been with any other actor in the leading role. He plays a retarded man released from prison after serving twenty-five years for killing his mother and her lover with a sling blade. He felt morally justified because he saw their act of love as evil, only later realizing that it was wrong to kill them.

We follow his release, first accepted with kindness by a local repair shop where he reveals himself to be skilled at fixing motors, then received into the family of a boy he's befriended, played wonderfully by LUCAS BLACK. Unfortunately, the family life is ruined by a violently dysfunctional man called Doyle (DWIGHT YOAKAM) who is a crude bully and redneck full of bitter hatred and resenting the intrusion of Thornton and the boy and possessive in his relationship with the mother.

The biggest weakness in the screenplay is figuring out why the mother would ever be attracted by such a bigoted bully. Yoakam plays him in a ruthless manner that shows no compassion for the character and he's so evil that you have to wonder about the mother's mental faculties in letting him even near the family. It's also hard to believe that she would let the retired man use her garage for shelter on such short acquaintance with her son. But hey, this is a movie, this is the script, and that's it.

All of the acting is uniformly excellent, particularly BILLY BOB THORNTON, who was nominated and would have deserved the Oscar for his penetrating study of a retarded man without a single false note.

Tension builds because the viewer is aware that some sort of confrontation has to happen between Karl (Thornton) and Doyle. It's a matter of waiting to see what develops and that's what keeps the viewer hooked onto the story and wondering how it will conclude.

It's a fully realized slice of life, Southern style with hillbilly overtones, always centered on the main thrust of the story without ever losing its touch, rich in atmospheric detail. J.T. WALSH as a fellow inmate is impressive, as is JOHN RITTER (whom I didn't even recognize at first) as a sympathetic gay man, amazingly real in a serious role. ROBERT DUVALL has a cameo bit as an indifferent father that he plays faultlessly.

Summing up: Brilliant film, highly recommended and involving a very touching relationship between the small boy and the retarded man.

As someone who loves good filmmaking, I rate this film among the best I've ever seen in all areas of the craft. Some of the criticisms of this film are hard to fathom.

The screenplay has the tight conciseness of a well-honed play (which this essentially was derived from) and doesn't fail to prick at the emotions and the intellect of the viewer. The photography, the casting and the editing all click together quite admirably.

However, I always marvel at the negative, emotionalized responses to otherwise superb films such as this by those who seem to miss the entire point of a movie like "Sling Blade".

I did not see a political message about abortion, or a justification of murder or even a backhanded putdown of the rural people of Arkansas. (Many of the characters were locals, by the way.) Some viewers are setting themselves up to be against this film since they are wearing their own feelings on their sleeves and fail to see the subtle layers of the story. They are seeing only the reflection of themselves on the surface of the water, rather than the complex world below.

Theater and film are rooted in images and characterizations designed to help us explore the human condition. It was once said that Tolstoy's voluminous novel "War and Peace" could be summed up in a single sentence thereby negating the need to write the book. Art is not a fast explanation, but a captivating and thought-provoking trip that hopefully forces us to think about our own motivations. Taking a one-dimensional view of this film might lead one to believe that Karl Childer's central message is that we should all eat biscuits smeared with mustard.

"Sling Blade" excels at the job of making us examine the terrible choices life gives us by providing a set of characters who interact in a moving, curious and revealing way. It is not reality nor is it political, but a method by which we can look at our own individual realities.

Others who seemed disenchanted with this film out-of-hand are those who found it "slow". Helloooo! This film is SUPPOSED to be slow and agonizingly so. It is carefully walking you to the conclusion, step-by-step, so you can squirm uncomfortably at the overall foreshadowing. It ain't an explosion-a-minute John Woo filmmaking and it certainly isn't light comedy, though it induces a surprising number of smiles.

This is a film that makes us look at true evil in the form of J.T. Walsh, Dwight Yoakum and Robert Duval's characters and compare it to the pure goodness of the damaged creature portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton, whose own brutalization leads him to seek justice in his own imperfect way.

To help those out who didn't "get" this film, I might recommend that you consider Thornton's character to be an amalgamation of Herman Melville's innocently homicidal protagonist in "Billy Budd" and Mary Shelley's sad monster Frankenstein. These characters, like Thornton's Karl Childers, were dramatic vehicles for the purpose of making us think. They did bad things but we were forced to view them compassionately because they reflected our own conflicting traits.

Don't read things into a film that aren't there, but don't ignore the interesting elements that are. Get those wheels upstairs turning and start enjoying intelligent filmmaking instead of merely seeking an excitement fix!