during the Great Depression, it's immediately clear the gentle giant didn't stand a chance of winning back his freedom or saving his life. Since The Green Mile, based on a book by Stephen King, takes place in the southern U.S.
Though innocent, he was a black man who had been convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls. More pivotally, the weight given to each moment lends The Green Mile a ponderousness that works against the emotions the story seems to want to plug into.The dreary routine of the prison was shaken up when an inmate named John Coffey arrived. The simple fable can’t stand such scrutiny. But, ultimately, stretching and squeezing each moment might have been more of a disservice to King. Undoubtedly, Darabont felt he needed to be faithful to King’s story by capturing every nuance. The moviemaking is heartfelt, and the technical crew has established period moods and details nicely. Thus, the film’s snail’s pace only widens the gap by which the audience will stay ahead of plot developments. Nearly every twist, like getting Coffey to heal the cancer victim, is wholly predictable. It takes another hour for the penny to drop and for Hanks to wonder if Coffey could possibly help the warden’s wife, who is suffering horribly from a brain tumor. Hanks, in an unusually reactive role, investigates Coffey’s legal case only briefly and his supernatural powers not in the slightest. Moments later, as overhead lights burn and explode and the special effects boys do their stuff, Coffey exhales the poisons in a blizzard of tiny black specks that rush upward and then vanish. More remarkably, Hanks witnesses two instantaneous healings in which Coffey seems to pull toxins out of the sufferer and into his body. This huge black man hardly seems capable of raping and murdering 9-year-old twin sisters, and Hanks gradually suspects a miscarriage of justice.
On the periphery are Harry Dean Stanton as a crackpot trustee, James Cromwell as the well-meaning warden and Patricia Clarkson and Bonnie Hunt as Cromwell and Hanks’ wives.Īt the end of the Row 8 death row cells - the “Green Mile” - sits John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a mountain of a man with a gentle, naive nature. Hanks, the head guard, and his chief assistant (David Morse) experience less trouble from the condemned men than from a mean-spirited fellow guard (Doug Hutchison) who is unqualified for a job he obtained through high-level political connections. There is the crusty Cajun convict (Michael Jeter) who adopts and trains a pet mouse, and a thoroughly sadistic psycho nicknamed “Wild Bill” (Sam Rockwell).
The green mile movie#
Instead, the movie acquaints viewers with the lives and attitudes of a handful of guards and inmates. This is Darabont’s second outing as a director - his first was 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption - and this time, the story is told in flashbacks by an ancient fellow in an old-folks home (Dabbs Greer) about his days as a death row head guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary during the Depression.Ĭuriously, the main story takes more than an hour to get under way. Undoubtedly, the film will win admirers among moviegoers and critics and may perform well in ancillary markets.
By inflating the simple story with a languorous pace, pregnant pauses, long reaction shots and an infinitely slow metabolism, writer-director Frank Darabont has burdened his movie version with more self-importance than it can possibly sustain.ĭespite fine performances by Tom Hanks and an excellent ensemble cast, The Green Mile looks like a tough sell for the holidays. film feels as if it comes from a short story, a small slice of time and place in which a sentimental fable about one of “God’s miracles” can blossom. Based on Stephen King’s 1996 serialized novel, the Warner Bros.
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