SLING BLADE |
| CREDITS: Director: Billy Bob Thornton. Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas Black, John
Ritter, Dwight Yoakam, Natalie Canerday, Jerry Woodridge, Robert Duvall & J.T. Walsh.
USA 1996. INTRODUCTION: Thornton's Oscar winning directorial and writing debut finally reaches this sceptred isle after taking longer to cross the pond than the May Flower. SYNOPSIS: Released from a mental institute at the completion of his treatment following an unfortunate bout of matricide, the mentally retarded Karl Childers (Thornton) returns to his home town where he seems to be oddly unwelcome by his bible bashing father (Duvall). There he encounters the paternally challenged Frank (Black) and acting as a surrogate father Karl encounters his young widowed mother Linda (Canerday), her abusive boyfriend Doyle (Yoakam) and her gay best friend Vaughan (Ritter). REVIEW: This incredibly simplistic plot that pits a mentally handicapped man, a homosexual, a single mother and her son against a deep south red-necked bigot is black and white in the extreme, but this allows Thornton as both director, writer and actor to thoroughly explore his creation. Adapted from his own one man stage show, following his acclaimed co-scripting duties on "One False Move" and Duvall vehicle "A Family Thing", Thornton won thoroughly undeserving writing Oscar, indicative of the greater regard the actor is held in over the writer in Hollywood. Thornton as actor however is superb, he was Oscar nominated, unjustly loosing out to Geoffrey Rush for "Shine", with a series of facial expressions and vocalisations that previously only the Muppets had been able to manage Thornton injects his character with the pathos it truly requires. Black, best known as Caleb in TV's "American Gothic", puts in a stunning big screen debut as the young Frank, while Canerday is unsurprisingly underused as Linda. Real life country star Yoakam puts in a menacing performance as the abusive boyfriend, a near unrecognisable Ritter turns up as the gay friend, an instantly recognisable Woodridge appears as Karl's counsellor, indie director Jim Jarmusch cameos as Mr. Frosty, while Walsh continues to maintain his reputation as the hardest working actor in Hollywood despite his death early this year as one of Karl's fellow inmate and last and by all means least Duvall mercilessly hams it up in a thankfully short cameo as Karl's dad. This is Thornton's film, taking up as he does the positions of writer, director and star, and as such it tells us perhaps a little too much about Thornton's mental life than we'd really like to know. Films don't come much more Oedipal than this, with a hero who killed his mother and her lover for daring to have sex, we find him plunged into a re-enactment of the incident when he now an adult encounters Frank at the age he was when he committed the murders and Frank's mother Linda, who is in a relationship with a man who is clearly an unsuitable father-figure, and even encouraging us to wish this man dead. So we see the previous murder replayed anew, leaving us not to wonder if Karl will kill again but rather whom he will kill. If you're in the mood for a deeply moving character study, you could do a lot worse than "Kaiser Blade" some people call it "Sling Blade" but I call it "Kaiser Blade". Mutt's Rating: *** |