The film is a lot like a Jane Austen novel set in rural Arkansas. The similarities are many. There is no action in Slingblade. Instead, the story unfolds in drawing rooms, in typical Austen-esque manner. The characters sit around and talk, and the narrative unfolds through the conversations. The past is uncovered, the present is explained, and the future is pre-empted.
Like all Austen's novels, too, Slingblade employs stock characters. Once you meet them, you feel you've known these characters for a long, long, time, and you also know exactly how they are going to behave. Thornton's portrayal of Karl Childers is a typical example. Karl might be slow, but he understands the important things in life. His speech is drawn out, but the information he conveys indicate that he has high moral standards which he means to uphold.
Thornton's mentally challenged protagonist is supported by an equally stereotypical cast. There's the mature young lad who has had manhood suddenly thrust upon after the death of his father. There's the devoted and long-suffering single mother with a perfectly horrid boyfriend in tow. And there's her male friend, who's as camp as he can be without being a Saturday Night Live sketch. Naturally the boyfriend is alcoholic and hates everyone else in the film. But the obviousness of the characterization neither detracts from the story, nor really prepares you for its inevitable outcome.
By far the most unusual feature of Slingblade is the fact that the whole tale is an inversion of what we normally expect on the screen. The narrative structure of traditional film begins with some disruption in the lives of the characters, and the business of the film shows these characters strugglingly to set their world back on its proper course. Slingblade begins with everything righting itself for Karl Childers. He's freed from the State Hospital and he returns to his home.
Thus the curtain opens on a most unusual film, which moves slowly and plods along on its course until the curtain is dropped. But whatever about its deathly slow pace, Slingblade is riveting. The desire you might feel for something to happen in the beginning of this film is overwhelmingly squashed by the wish that the inevitable would not occur.