Linda and Frank are still grieving the recent death of husband and father and are struggling to cope with Linda’s abusive boyfriend, Doyle. He also has a beautiful spirit and a big heart and he and Frank soon become inseparable when Frank’s beleaguered but kind mother, Linda, invites Karl to stay in their garage. Karl, though simpleminded, is very perceptive about people. Eventually his travels lead him to a dollar store where he meets Frank, a 12-year-old boy who seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. After his release, Karl wanders around his small southern hometown carrying his only possessions, several books held together by an old-style book strap. We glean that Karl’s childhood was not a happy one with a promiscuous mother and a brutal father. When we first meet mentally handicapped Karl Childers (Billy Bob Thornton), the film’s protagonist, he is being released from a mental institution for killing his mother and her boyfriend when he was just a child, an ignominious beginning for a character who becomes a hero. Believing that Frank and Linda’s lives are at risk, he decides that he must act in order to protect them and in a heroic and self-sacrificing act, he does just that. Doyle cruelly ridicules both Karl and Frank and soon his abusive behavior escalates culminating in a physical altercation between Frank and him to which Karl is a witness. When in Karl relates a story of when as a boy he witnessed his parents killing his newborn brother because they didn’t want him, it becomes easy to see why he became imbalanced. Karl and Frank take to confiding in one another, and Frank admits that his father did not get hit by a train, but committed suicide. Everybody wishes she would get away from Doyle for good, especially Vaughan Cunningham, her gay friend and manager at the dollar store. Doyle is a mean drunk who sponges off Linda and is jealous of Frank for the attention she pays him.
Need cord cutting tech support? Join our new Cord Cutting Tech Support Facebook Group for help.When we first meet mentally handicapped Karl Childers (Billy Bob Thornton), the film’s protagonist, he is being released from a mental institution for killing his mother and her boyfriend when he was just a child, an ignominious beginning for a character who becomes a hero. Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more news, tips, and reviews. You can head over to their site and sign up for any of their plans starting at just $20 a month.
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Hulu with Live vs YouTube TV vs DIRECTV STREAM vs Sling TV vs fuboTV vs Philo.The Beginner’s Guide to Cord Cutting 2021.Here's Everything Coming to Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video This Week.