Billy Bob Thornton makes awkward, withdrawn men worth watching by letting us see how much ordinary company costs them. We rate him most highly when a film gives that vulnerability room without indulging every eccentricity.
Fi1m perspective
Ordinary company looks exhausting for Billy Bob Thornton's Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). His stillness makes the barber's loneliness visible without asking him to explain it, and gives us a reason to stay with a deliberately slow crime film. Tricia Cooke, editing with Joel and Ethan Coen, allows us time to study him, while Carter Burwell's music lends support that the performance scarcely needs. Frances McDormand's warmer Doris Crane gives him a useful contrast and holds our interest on her own. The broader supporting turns are less helpful, and some later stretches test the patience Thornton has earned.
That interest in difficult company was there in One False Move (1992), directed by Carl Franklin, in which he plays Ray Malcolm. The screenplay he wrote with Tom Epperson gives its criminals and police enough pride and awkwardness to make their decisions matter. His breakthrough as writer, director and star came with Sling Blade (1996), where Karl Childers struggles with ordinary conversation. Thornton makes the effort behind Karl's few words moving, while Lucas Black and Natalie Canerday help his more conspicuous acting feel at home among the other performances. As a director, though, he lets some scenes linger after we have understood them.
Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998) gives that vulnerability a sharper purpose. As Jacob Mitchell, Thornton makes the prospect of wealth look dangerous because we understand his feelings more readily than he understands the plans around him. We were more upset than we expected by Jacob's difficulty keeping up with the others. It is a performance that makes the crime plot hurt. In Michael Bay's Armageddon (1998), his Dan Truman supplies welcome calm amid the frantic cutting.
The comedy lead Willie in Bad Santa (2003) and television's Lorne Malvo in Fargo (2014) followed, with the latter beginning a substantial television phase. There is a risk of treating Thornton as a reliable supplier of peculiar men, when his work as Karl and Ed is so precise about the difficulty of getting along with other people. Start with A Simple Plan; choose something else if the evening needs cheering up.
Biography
Billy Bob Thornton is an American actor, screenwriter and director. He wrote, directed and starred as Karl Childers in the 1996 film Sling Blade, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also wrote and appeared as Ray Malcolm in the 1992 film One False Move.
Thornton was born on 4 August 1955 in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He gained early recognition in films including Tombstone (1993) and later appeared in Armageddon (1998), Love Actually (2003) and Bad Santa (2003). He has also worked in television, including a role in the 2014 series Fargo.
