Sling Blade

In the mid-1990s, Karl Childers is an intellectually disabled Arkansas man whose parents raised him in abusive conditions. He has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12 after he murdered his mother and her lover with a sling blade. The state decides that he is no longer dangerous and releases him to his small home town, where he takes up work fixing engines.

Karl befriends 12-year-old Frank Wheatley and shares details of his past, including the killings. Frank introduces Karl to his mother, Linda, and her friend and boss, Vaughan. Despite Vaughan's concerns about Karl's history, Linda allows him to move into her garage, angering Linda's abusive, alcoholic boyfriend Doyle. Vaughan tells Karl that he fears Doyle could hurt or kill Linda and Frank.

Karl becomes a father figure to Frank, who misses his real father and despises Doyle. As they grow closer, Karl tells Frank that he is haunted by an incident that happened when he was six or eight years old. His parents performed an abortion of his unwanted baby brother and gave him the body to dispose of. Karl found the infant still moving and buried it alive. Karl later visits his father, who has become a sickly hermit, and scolds him for his cruelty.

After Doyle refuses to leave Linda's house during one of his outbursts, Frank attacks him by throwing things at him. Linda later reconciles with Doyle, who announces that they are going to marry and he will become the head of the house. He tells Karl that he is no longer welcome. When Frank protests Doyle grabs him, but Karl intervenes and warns him never to touch Frank again.

Realizing that an unhappy childhood or worse awaits Frank, Karl tells him and Linda to spend the night at Vaughan's house. He then kills Doyle with a lawn mower blade and surrenders to the police. Returned to the state hospital, he is less passive than he was during his previous institutionalization. He silences a sexual predator who had previously forced him to listen to stories about his crimes, then looks out of a window towards an open field.

• Billy Bob Thornton as Karl Childers[7]
• Dwight Yoakam as Doyle Hargraves[7]
• J. T. Walsh as Charles Bushman[7]
• John Ritter as Vaughan Cunningham[7]
• Lucas Black as Frank Wheatley[7]
• Natalie Canerday as Linda Wheatley
• James Hampton as Jerry Woolridge
• Robert Duvall as Frank Childers
• Jim Jarmusch as Deke, the Frostee Cream employee
• Rick Dial as Bill Cox
• Vic Chesnutt as Terence
• Brent Briscoe as Scooter Hodges
• Mickey Jones as Johnson
• Col. Bruce Hampton as Morris

Thornton first came up with the character of Karl while working on the film The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains. He developed the idea into a monologue which became a one man show, which he used to raise the funds to make the film.[8][1]

The film was made with a production budget of $1 million financed by The Shooting Gallery, and was sold to Miramax for $10 million, which at the time was a record price for an independent film.[9]

The film grossed $24,444,121 in the United States against a $1 million production budget.[10] It grossed a further $9.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $34 million.[2]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a "Certified Fresh" rating of 96% based on reviews from 56 critics, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The site's consensus states "You will see what's coming, but the masterful performances, especially Thornton's, will leave you riveted."[11] On Metacritic it has a score of 84% based on reviews from 26 critics.[12]

The Washington Post called it a "masterpiece of Southern storytelling."[13] Kevin Thomas wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the film is "a mesmerizing parable of good and evil and a splendid example of Southern storytelling at its most poetic and imaginative".[14] The New York Times critic Janet Maslin praised the performances but said that "it drifts gradually toward climactic events that seem convenient and contrived".[15]

• Quotations related to Sling Blade at Wikiquote
• Official website
• Sling Blade at IMDb
• Sling Blade at AllMovie
• Sling Blade at Box Office Mojo
• Sling Blade – Actual locations of Movie Landmarks