Search
What's Hot
Day-by-Day Fall Schedule
Idol Winner Speaks!
Jim Parsons Comes Out
Game of Thrones Star's Sex Stare

Sling Blade

1996, Movie, R, 135 mins

Sling Blade: Review

SLING BLADE
starstarstarstar
Sleepy, creepy, oddly moving fable about a small-town misfit who tries to go home again, from actor-screenwriter turned director Billy Bob Thornton. Twenty-five years ago, 12-year-old Karl Childers (Thornton) killed his abusive mama and her lover with a sling blade, and was sent away to a hospital for the criminally insane. Now he's returning to the tight-knit community where he's become a bogey story with which to scare children. The beetle-browed Childers is a mesmerizing creation, in the tradition of John Steinbeck's Lenny (OF MICE AND MEN) and Harper Lee's Boo Radley (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD), but -- quite literally -- with his own unique voice: He speaks in a gravelly rasp whose peculiar cadences are almost poetic. Childers befriends a boy (Lucas Black) whose life is slowly being poisoned by an alcoholic bully (Dwight Yoakam), and does the inevitable bad thing for a good reason. The atmosphere is Southern Gothic pure enough to do Carson McCullers proud -- grotesque, sentimental and dankly nasty -- and Thornton (who penned ONE FALSE MOVE and A FAMILY THING) manages not to undermine his own writing. He occasionally lets the actor in him overrule the director -- he can't bear to lose a good scene, even if it's repetitive, and lets things play long when they need to be trimmed -- but as flaws go, that's a minor one. And he elicits breathtaking performances from the rest of the cast, including country singer Yoakam and John Ritter as a gay shopkeeper. leave a comment
Are You Watching?
Sling Blade
Loading ...
Advertisement

Our Partners

Advertisement

Related Websites

You might be also interested in the following websites:

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. American Idol
  2. NCIS
  3. Big Bang Theory
  4. Voice
  5. Person of Interest
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Jessica Simpson
  2. Khloe Kardashian
  3. Kate Middleton
  4. Maria Menounos
  5. Kim Kardashian
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. Avengers
  2. Battleship
  3. The Dictator
  4. Dark Shadows
  5. What To Expect When You're Expecting
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. Revenge
  2. Days of our Lives
  3. Young and the Restless
  4. Modern Family
  5. So You Think You Can Dance
more top videos