Directed by: Billy Bob Thornton
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, John Ritter, Dwight Yokum, Natalie Canerday

Here’s a little insider’s tip to all you screenwriters out there: Mentally challenged characters are Hollywood gold! It seems like every movie that comes out featuring a retarded main character garners instant acclaim from both the Hollywood critical elite and consumers. Check it out: Of Mice and Men, Bill, Forrest Gump, Radio, and Pee-Wee Herman. And Billy Bob Thornton’s Karl Childers, of the movie Sling Blade, is no exception.

Karl Childers is a balcony-browed, shuffling, mentally challenged person who is released from a mental hospital where he’d spent most of his childhood and adult life for murdering his mother. He finds himself alone and helpless in his small Southern hometown, which is full of the sort of quirky, backwoods, but amiable types you’d expect to find in a small Southern town. With the help of a doctor from the mental hospital he finds a job in a small engine repair shop. Soon Karl is befriended by a young boy named Frank Wheatly (Black) who decides to bring him home. Miraculously, Frank’s mom (Canerday) and her boozing red-neck boyfriend (Yoakum) allow Karl to move into their garage.

Sling Blade is full of extremely wonderful performances. Billy Bob Thornton underwent an amazing physical transformation in becoming his character of Karl Childers. BBT (as we like to call him) would get up at 2:00 am every morning and spend 7 hours in the make up chair. Eventually someone would come along and ask him why he’d been sitting in the make up chair for 7 hours since his costume required no make up. That’s right, the look of Karl Childers was all done by BBT (that’s what they call him in the biz) by jutting his jaw out for upwards of 14 hours a day. This is true. It would cramp up so bad that it would lock! That’s dedicating your self to the role, and possibly months of physical therapy!

One pleasant surprise in the cast is John Ritter as Vaughan Cunningham, the local out-of-place gay man in this little backwater town. Ritter plunged into this role head first, coming at it from all angles, and nailed it hard. He really enslaved this character and pumped it up into a throbbing engorged mass of fantastic acting.

Similarly, Dwight Yokum executes a brilliant performance as Doyle Hargraves, the drunk, abusive red-neck boyfriend of little Frank’s mother. This character is a very subtle blend of comic relief and gut wrenching insidiousness.

All in all, I would say that Sling Blade is one of those mainstream movies that’s not really so mainstream and that, once seen, becomes an instant personal classic for anyone. I rank it up there with such wonderful films as The Shawshank Redemption, Cider House Rules and Zapped! starring Scot Baio.