Jan. 29, 2003 - 11:03 9m
this one got recommended to me about a week ago by one of our newest fellow movie buffs. i had seen it when it first came out, but Leslie and i decided to watch it to refresh ourselves late last night. this one's currently number 157 on the IMDb list. i would consider this the first big Billy Bob Thornton movie. he was in some notable films before this, but he didn't really get noticed by many people. this film really put him on the map at least in my mind.
Sling Blade is about a simpleton really. he plays a strange simple man with a strange way of talking who always rubs his hands together and has a terrible past. at the beginning of the film he's being released from a state mental facility after a couple of decades for having killed his mother and a young man when he was a young boy. once he leaves the home, he goes to stay with a young boy who befriends him and his mother. his mother is romantically involved with a terrible and dangerous man who threatens to kill her if she ever left him, and the whole situation kind of likens itself to Karl's (Thornton) own past. in the end he has to decide whether to try to protect his new family, or to leave them with this cruel man.
first of all i have to comment that the young boy in this film is basically a carbon copy of Jem from To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). he acts the same, is the same age almost, and even has the same voice. plus this all takes place in sort of a small town in the south, so they both have southern accents.
also, i think this movie has about the worst music that i've seen in quite a while. i know it's supposed to be southern music with kind of mixed emotions to it, but it still seems as though they could've done much better than the crap that makes its presence felt all too clearly bad here.
also, Leslie commented on how different Billy Bob Thornton looks in this film than he now does in other films. i definitely agree. she thought maybe he had had a facelift or at least something done to himself. from what i could find, i didn't read anything about facelifts, etc. he has had various things happen to him physically within the past 20 years or so though that have affected his weight and health. i know he just recently stopped smoking, so maybe the cigarettes were making him look more gaunt for just a while there. i'm really not certain. in any case, i'm guessing it's health/weight related. and the fact that he always squints his eyes and sticks his jaw out so far in Sling Blade.