Sling Blade, 1996

What can I say about a film that so much has already been written about? I could praise Billy Bob Thornton's excellent writing, or his plain straightforward directing that fits the material so well. Or, of course, his Oscar nominated performance in the lead role. But all of that has been done over and over. In case you've been living under a rock, 'Sling Blade', is the tale of a mentally challenged middle aged man released from a mental hospital where he's spent most of his life incarcerated for a brutal double homicide, and a troubled adolescent boy who befriends him. The two friends values of simple pleasures and simple right and wrong puts them at odds in the small town, good-ole-boy, Baptist South. The film's spot on portrayal of tribulations of the rural poor and the hope and hypocrisy, the goodness and wickedness that exist everywhere, every day make it a film that will remain timeless.

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