...a moving, poignant, humorous, chilling, and melancholic motion picture, with a bravura turn from its writer/director/star.
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Years ago, before Billy Bob Thornton became a household name, a good friend of mine told me about him; said to watch for him; said he was one of the most down-to-earth actors he'd ever seen. I'd never heard of Thornton. I'd never seen the small films my friend told me about, things like "One False Move" (1992), which Thornton cowrote, "The Killing Box" (1993), "Trouble Bound" (1993), or "Dead Man" (1995). Nor had I ever seen the short film Thornton wrote and starred in, "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade" (1994).
Then came the breakthrough in 1996 with the release of his first directorial effort, the full-length feature "Sling Blade," a film Thornton also wrote and starred in, winning him an Oscar for Best Screenplay and a nomination for Best Actor. Now, everybody knows him. And the actor's versatility has proved my friend right on the money.
Practically everybody has seen or heard about "Sling Blade" by now, too. But the thing about the film is its sneaky similarity to "Psycho II" (1983). You remember how after twenty-three years of incarceration in a mental institution for murdering his mother, her lover, and several other people, Norman Bates was finally deemed sane enough to be released back into society, only to find that no matter how hard he tried to be good, trouble followed him everywhere. Well, Thornton's Karl Childers is such a person. In his youth he killed two people, his mother and her lover; he was institutionalized for it; and twenty-odd years later he is released back into the world, not without consequences. The difference is that while "Psycho II" was done primarily for shock, "Sling Blade" is done as straight human drama. Both films have their moments of light humor, to be sure, but it's obviously "Sling Blade" that comes off more realistically and, in the long run, more chillingly.
In honor of the film's tenth anniversary (it was made in 1995 and released in 1996), Miramax Films and Buena Vista Home Entertainment provide it with a new, two-disc "Collector's Edition," containing what they call the "Director's Cut." However, Thornton calls it the "original cut," the version he made first, before it was abridged for theatrical release. This DVD set offers Thornton the opportunity to restore to the film about thirteen more minutes, which seems to me, if I may use the term, overkill. At 135 minutes, the theatrical version was already verging on slackness; at 148 minutes, the original version now seems to drag on forever. I would have personally preferred that Thornton made a shorter Director's Cut, one that tightened up the story line further; but what we get isn't too bad, in any case; and the movie's dedicated fans will love every added moment, I'm sure.
The movie begins with some back story, told by Karl to a journalism student (Sarah Boss) for her college newspaper on the day Karl is being released back into the community. Karl explains how he was raised in a shed in the backyard; how he seldom went to school because the other kids made fun of him for being simpleminded; how as a child he found his mother with her lover and in a rage killed them both with a Kaiser or sling blade (also known as a ditch bank blade). Now, his time in the hospital is up, and he no longer shows any homicidal signs. "Will you ever kill anybody again, Karl?" asks the reporter. "I don't reckon I got no reason to kill nobody," he answers. And with that exchange, the story is set up.
I can think of few other times in film when an actor has transformed himself so convincingly into a fictional character. Thornton almost literally becomes Karl Childers, and without appreciable makeup. It's his voice inflections and mannerisms; his bowl-cut hair; his slouching posture; his shambling gait; his odd, contorted facial expressions; and his baggy clothing that all contribute to a person unrecognizable as the actor Billy Bob Thornton.
The year before, 1994, Tom Hanks had accomplished on an emotional level something similar to this with Forrest Gump, but not on the same physical level. Interestingly, both actors managed to create believable people while elevating their mentally challenged characters to the status of mythic folk heroes. This was both a blessing a curse; the blessing being the screen endowment of such memorable and entertaining characterizations; the curse being the misconception that somehow the simpler a person is mentally, the more a person can better perceive the world and its problems. This is nonsense, of course, but the movies are, after all, make-believe; and sometimes it is fun to believe in such fictions, particularly if they are trying to make an metaphorical point.
Thus is Karl discharged into the real world, a place he has never known before. In his youth he was virtually locked away in a shed; and in all of his adult world he was locked away in a mental hospital. He has no friends and no relatives except a father who disowned him years before. He returns to his small Arkansas home town, yet he has nowhere to go.
The crux of the story is his friendship with a young boy, Frank Wheatley (Lucas Black). In his childlike way, Karl befriends the lad at a Laundromat. By chance, the boy's father has died and he's looking for an adult father figure. Karl, a sweet and gentle man, merely needs a friend, and the two strike up a sweet and gentle relationship. The boy's mother, Linda (Natalie Canerday), offers Karl a place to stay in their garage, and a lawn-mower repair shop offers him a job.
Then come the complications. Without conflict, we have no story. The complication comes in the form of one Doyle Hargraves (Dwight Yoakam), the mother's redneck boyfriend. The movie suggests that there is little real difference between someone who is mentally challenged and someone who is simply stupid, and the movie provides several good examples, notably Doyle, a construction worker who is far more certifiably wacko than Karl ever was. Doyle is a crude, ignorant, violent, narrow-minded, alcoholic bigot who hates most everyone, most especially young Frank. Naturally, he takes an instant dislike to Karl, too, and we can see from the outset of the picture where this business is going.
The movie is mainly a character study--of Karl, certainly, but of several other small-town types. One of these other major characters is Vaughan Cunningham (John Ritter), a man living under cover as one of the few gay folks in town. He's a friend of the mother, and he soon becomes a friend of Karl, sensing in him a sort of kindred spirit, both of them being outsiders in the town, people different from the norm. Ritter makes a remarkable impression on the viewer not only because his character is so sympathetic and sincere but because it's the first time most of us realized what a good dramatic actor Ritter was, after his playing so many light, comedic roles all his life.
Other persons of note in the story: Character actor J.T. Walsh as a fellow inmate in Karl's mental hospital; character actor James Hampton as the head of the hospital; and Robert Duvall as Karl's father.
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