Sling Blade (1996) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

An interesting character study - a story which invites us to speculate on the nature of right and wrong.

Carl is released from a mental hospital after 25 years because the legal procedures say it is time. It is clear that he should not be released in the sense that he doesn't seem to have any way to function outside the hospital. He knows absolutely nobody on the outside, and his mental capacity is limited. That alone would be bad enough, but the greatest danger is not the one he poses to himself, but society. 25 years ago he killed his mother and her lover. He killed the man, a local bully, because he thought the man was raping his mother. Then he killed his mother when he figured out it wasn't rape and she enjoyed having sex with the guy who was always taunting him.

After 25 years, Carl seems to have figured out that his actions were a tad extreme, but we have to ask ourselves, "if it took him 25 years to puzzle that out, what's going to happen if a similar but not identical situation occurs in his life? Will he act first, then figure out he was wrong after another 25 years of meditation?" 

Carl likes the boy and his mother, and the boyfriend's bullying must lead to an inevitable bloody confrontation. You can pretty much figure that out 90 minutes before it happens, but the simplistic plot is pretty much irrelevant here.

The complexity in the situation is that Carl seems to us at first to be a hero. The script meticulously creates a hatred between the audience and the bully, so when Carl butchers him, we feel good. Then we feel sick inside, because we realize that the bully has never hurt anyone, and the mother really seems to love him. The guy just has a serious alcohol problem. That's certainly bad, and the guy is a bad dude, but we can't murder people just for being drunk and obnoxious. Can we? The trick of the script is that it makes us believe, briefly, that Carl did the right thing, and then to realize that we've been lured into his point of view, which is outside the normal morality of human civilization. Carl still doesn't understand anything more than he did when he killed his mother and his mother's lover. If somebody seems to present a threat to you in some way, kill him. He has not learned of more moderate means to respond to threats.

This is the kind of movie that people talk about. Did Carl do the right thing? Did the bully deserve to die? If not, why did it make me feel good when Carl killed him? Are we, with our lip-service respect for the codes of civilization, still so close to Carl's level?

Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed, and starred as Carl. The film has been universally praised, and lifted Thornton from obscurity to household name status.