Word: bladed
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...each other, "'Billy Bob' who? Is there a 'Billy Bob' here?" If you listened real hard, you could even hear "Clueless" Cher Horowitz piping, "This is California, not Kentucky!" All the same, Southern-born filmmaker Billy Bob Thornton has cut himself a big slice of the Hollywood pie. "Sling Blade"--nominated for Thornton's script and for his own starring performance--was, for some, the biggest surprise in a nomination field full of offbeat choices...
...offbeat is "Sling Blade," really? In some ways, Thornton's Southern-gothic thriller is an unlikely hybrid of "Forrest Gump" and "Pulp Fiction," the tent-poles of the Oscar race two years ago. That is, "Sling Blade" inhabits some fairly original territory, but doesn't deliver on all of its promises...
Movies, however, are called "Sling Blade" for a reason, and that reason is Doyle (Dwight Yoakam, sans cowboy hat), Linda's construction-worker boyfriend. Doyle, the trashiest of trash, is goading and just generally pissed when sober, but dangerous and violent when drunk--which, sadly for Linda and Frank, is pretty much all the time...
...Sling Blade" doesn't pretend for a moment not to know where it is going, but the heart of the film lies not so much in what happens as in why. Sometimes, the reasons are stirring: the Bible-born compassion Karl has for lonely Frank cannot tolerate the cruelty of the Herod-like Doyle. His inevitable act of violence is, at least in part, a religious mercy mission. Other reasons are less convincing: Does a story arc this simple need back-story effluvia like buried infants, failed bar bands, an attempt by John Ritter (yes, the John Ritter) to play...
Like "Gump," "Sling Blade" creates a fascinating protagonist but never fully decides what to do with him. Thornton is nonetheless a wonder to behold in the role, the rare actor who turns obvious mannerisms into a palpable personality. Karl ends all of his sentences with a guttural self-affirmation ("I don't reckon I got no reason to kill nobody, mmmhmmm") as though all of his statements contained a deeper truth that he alone fully appreciates...