Sling Blade
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas BlackBrand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 148 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-06-07
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Miramax
Movie Reviews of Sling Blade
Movie Review: Excellent, big hearted film
Summary: 5 Stars
"That Frank, he lives inside of his own heart. That's an awful big place to live in."
So gravels Karl, Billy Bob Thornton's unique husky-voiced creation as he describes the inner character of his friend and surrogate son- the innocent and pure Frank. Thornton could easily use this line to describe the broad and embracing spirit of his award-winning 1996 directorial debut, the contemporary classic SLINGBLADE.
Originally released in the halcyon days of independent film-making, the bygone era known as the 90's, SLINGBLADE deftly and eerily combines the wholesome everyman small town ideals of a Norman Rockwell painting with the morbid Southern Gothic tone of William Faulkner's best prose.
Filming in and around his Arkansasian home town, Thornton pulls off a creative hat trick - expanding his one man play and short film into a feature length celebration of salvation through grace and atonement through blood as staged in the backwoods and clapboard houses of rural America.
As a Director, Thornton holds his camera in capricious long shots and expanded takes, allowing his characters to exist in an exaggerated time and space, thereby empowering his actors to explore the nuances of their shadowy lives and share freely of their expansive hearts. Yes all of these people have secrets- Thornton rarely saturates his frame with full light. Bands of shadow wash across every character. Everybody has flaws- potential for good and evil in equal measure- even the villainous Doyle Hargraves (deliciously played by country-western star Dwight Yokum), deserving of Book of Revelation retribution as any character in recent memory, has his moments of vulnerability. The tragic wide-eyed ten year old Frank (played without any cloying sentiment by Lucas Black) too is capable of sudden violence when defending his mother.
Thornton shows he trusts his actors. With his continual use of long unbroken takes, he doesn't artificially create performances through imposed editing. These actors embrace the loud silences and large spaces and time and, as a result, appear to truly and organically erupt in moments of joy, compassion, humor and rage- all in the gentle lilting brogue of a brown water Arkansas drawl. The ensemble cast, made up of professionals (John Ritter in a heart-breakingly humane and admirable performance) and locals (several non-actors appear in effective support), alike never fail to hold the camera's eye.
The film is violent, but tastefully so. The bloodiest moments are reserved for off camera-employing the audience's imaginations to create far more vibrant images than any camera could provide- a lesson too many of Thornton's contemporaries forgot. The most violent and jarring moments occur in Thornton's elliptical dialogue. He understands the power of word pictures. He also displays a brilliant ability to oscillate a scene from chilling to hilarious to tragic on a turn of a phrase.
And at the center of this dark fairy tale is Thornton himself, transformed completely into the character of Karl Childers- a middle aged man recently released from "the nervous hospital". A literary descendent of The Frankenstein Monster, Lennie Small, Forrest Gump and Boo Radley (brilliantly realized in one of filmdom's most obscure "in jokes"- Robert Duvall appears unbilled as Childers' father), Karl rubs his hands with Lady MacBeth syndrome in guilt. With his high-water pants and hunched-over gait, centering himself from the bottom of his chin and speaking in a growling and grunting exhale Childers lends himself to instant imitation. But what no imitator can ever capture is the calm benevolence lurking behind Thornton's brown eyes.
Thornton's Karl Childers is one of the greatest characters ever created for film. Like the fatherless Frank, the simple minded Childers is pure of heart and in a state of grace and yet he possesses a terrifying capacity for violence. For inside those loving and forgiving eyes lies too a direct portal into what Karl himself would call "Hades". He is simple sure. But he is not simplistic. His heart, like the story-world he lives in is "an awful big place to live in."
An unforgettable film.
Summary of Sling Blade
Sometimes a hero comes from the most unlikely place. Twenty-five years after committing a crime karl childers is returning to the small town of his youth. He lands a job which leads him to an unlikely friendship with a young boy and his mother. However when the mothers abusive boyfriend appears things change. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 09/01/2006 Starring: Billy Bob Thornton Lucas Black Run time: 135 minutes Rating: NrSimilar DVD Movies
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