Review: Sling Blade

Billy Bob Thornton stars as Karl, released from a mental institute 25 years after he killed his mother and her lover with the title implement. Karl, who is somewhat intellectually slow, is initially apprehensive about re-entering the outside world, but the man who runs the institution (James Hampton) manages to fix Karl up with a job fixing things at the local auto shop, as he has quite the aptitude for it. Karl also quickly makes friends with an introspective little boy named Frank (Lucas Black), whose mother (Natalie Canerday) has started seeing a bullying, hard-drinking oaf named Doyle (Dwight Yoakam). Doyle considers Frank weird and wimpy, picks on Canerday’s gay friend Vaughan (John Ritter!), and definitely takes an immediate disliking to Karl. His constant needling of Karl and abuse towards both mother and boy, stirs up old feelings within Karl. Robert Duvall has a brief role as Karl’s hateful father, now a lonely, embittered, and half-crazy old man. Brent Briscoe plays a co-worker, whilst J.T. Walsh appears at the beginning and end as an unsavoury inmate/patient of the mental institution.

 

Essentially an extension of a short film (“Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade”) he wrote and starred in, Billy Bob Thornton decided to tackle directing with this startling 1996 debut. It’s haunting, tragic, humanistic, and although he had created the role for the earlier short film, Thornton’s Karl is a true movie original character. Thornton has given a lot of scene-stealing performances in his career, but he’s off the charts great here. He has simply never been better on screen, it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. The peculiar, painful-sounding voice he finds for Karl is really special. It’s oft imitated to great humour since, but Thornton’s performance itself isn’t remotely funny. It’s the perfect voice for such a pained, disturbed, and plain-spoken man who has seen a lot of things early on in life that one would hope no one would ever have to see. It’s not just the voice or the physicality to Karl that helps create the character, but also the particular vocabulary he has. The words he uses are fascinatingly old-fashioned, yet also simple. Karl may not be a terribly smart man, but he thinks a lot. Occasionally those thoughts are dark and pained (sometimes his thoughts are just about what he’d like to eat!). As he re-enters the world, he just wants to be left alone, but this world he re-enters merely stirs up old feelings and they aren’t good ones.

 

Young Lucas Black is also remarkable here, giving one of cinema’s best-ever child actor performances as Karl’s sensitive young friend, whose unhappy home life stirs up old memories and bad feelings inside of Karl. Karl’s protection of Frank is really lovely and sweet, but it’s also born out of his recognition of what the trauma of his own upbringing has done for him. He wants Frank to have a clean, safe passage into adulthood. Unfortunately, one meeting with Frank’s mother’s new suitor Doyle, and Karl realises their situations are sadly similar. Dwight Yoakam is spot-on as the short-tempered, prejudiced redneck arsehole, the exact last kind of guy someone like Karl should be meeting fresh out of an institution. Some of you will have encountered dipshit bullying losers like Doyle in your own life, and Yoakam is so impressively and identifiably loathsome, he deserved an Oscar nomination if you ask me. If there’s any levity in this pretty dark film, it’s probably in Karl’s interactions with the late John Ritter as Vaughan, a rather lonely gay man in a small town that mostly ridicules him. The humour isn’t homophobic or mean-spirited, as Vaughan, although somewhat nosy, is a sympathetic character. Ritter’s performance is surprisingly subtle, and he too probably deserved an Oscar nomination.

 

In smaller turns, indie director Jim Jarmusch is a surprising presence, playing a fast food vendor, and it’s great to see the highly underrated James Hampton as the guy running the mental institution, who helps Karl get his start on the outside world with some contacts. Really solid work by him, as always. Although you might think it’s odd how small the role is, Robert Duvall is unforgettably pathetic and haunted as Karl’s mean old father, who is now a sad ghost of an old man with no one giving a shit about him anymore. The late, great J.T. Walsh bookends the film in one of his last performances. He’s creepy and annoying in the best way possible. You’ll detest his character by the film’s end, despite only being on screen for a few minutes. Walsh, as he always did, made his minutes count here. The locations found for this film are absolutely perfect, too. It’s real redneck, working class stuff, however also really beautiful and seeming to come out of an earlier, simpler time. It’s borderline Mark Twain or something. There’s also an excellent, understated music score by Daniel Lanois (“All the Pretty Horses”), which quietly sneaks up on you I think.

 

If I have any gripes, it’s that the Director’s Cut of the film (which is the only cut on the DVD I have) is too much movie. It has the thing running at around 2 ½ hours, and it’s just too much muchness, though I’m not sure what I’d cut out. In fact, there’s very little I’d be comfortable cutting out, but I just can’t help but feel that the film runs too long. So far as flaws go, though, being too much of a good thing is a pretty good flaw to have I think.

 

I don’t know why, but this film is still so incredibly underrated and underseen. It’s brilliant. Heartbreaking, sadly inevitable finale too. It has to end this way, unfortunately. A really remarkable, disturbing yet sensitive film, with an equally remarkable lead performance by writer-director Thornton, and some choice supporting performances backing him up. Now, if you don’t mind I reckon I’ll have some of these French fried taters mmm-hmm.  

 

Rating: A+