Imagine if Forrest Gump had been raised in an abusive household, buried an infant alive and committed a grisly murder involving his mother, a schoolmate and a machete-like weapon. Meet Karl Childers, a mildly retarded child-like man with homicidal tendencies who is the anti-hero of ‘Sling Blade,’ the directorial debut from Academy Award nominee Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton, who has been writing scripts and acting since the 1980s, reportedly created the character of Karl while making faces at himself in the mirror in order to overcome nervousness before a performance. He has been doing a monologue of Karl in a one-man stage show for many years, and his physical transformation for the part is uncanny. Set in a small town in Arkansas, the film opens with a scene of Karl in a psychiatric hospital. He stares out the window, lower jaw jutting, oblivious as a fellow patient (played to creepy perfection by J.T. Walsh) shares the lurid details of sex crimes he committed. Karl has spent the past 25 years in the ‘nervous hospital,’ as he calls it, for killing his mother and a boyhood acquaintance after catching them in a compromising position on the living room floor. This happens to be the day of Karl’s release, and a young journalism student has come to interview him. As Karl speaks to her in his guttural southern drawl, it becomes obvious that he is a gentle man who sees the world in simple shades of black or white, good and evil. On the outside Karl befriends Frank Wheatley (Lucas Black), a young boy whose father committed suicide and whose mother Linda, although very loving, used poor judgment in choosing her current beau. Doyle, Linda’s abusive live-in, is played with remarkable depth by country singer Dwight Yoakam. He threatens to kill her and takes particular pleasure in bullying the boy. Doyle’s behavior doesn’t sit right with Karl’s sense of virtue, and he aims to do something about it.The film portrays Karl’s actions as being motivated by a love for the boy that is as simple as summertime in the South. But the film has the underlying theme that, like the South, morality is more complex than it appears. Thornton had complete creative control over the script, and the freshness he brings to this somewhat tired plot makes ‘Sling Blade’ superior fare.