# Green Mile, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Eugene Novikov

    The Green Mile (1999)
    Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
    http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
    Member: Online Film Critics Society

Starring Tom Hanks, David Morse, Harry Dean Stanton, James Cromwell, Doug Hutchinson, Sam Rockwell. Directed by Frank Darabont. Rated R.

The infamous Last Mile is chockful of the supernatural and metaphysical in The Green Mile, a gem from Stephen King and The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont. At three hours and eight minutes, your bladder may punish you, but this is one lumberer worth enduring. Hell, it's a pleasure through and through and one of the year's most powerful films. Despite its imperfections, I will not forget The Green Mile for a long time.

The story is told in flashback by an elderly Paul Edgecomb in a nursing home. He tells his wife about the summer of 1935 when he (played by Tom Hanks then) was a prison guard in charge of death row inmates. Edgecomb's domain was called "The Green Mile" -- like the traditional "Last Mile" except that the floor was the color of faded limes. The hands-down star of the cellblock was "Ol' Sparky," the electric chair, sitting peacefully, waiting for its next victim.

One day, a new inmate arrives. This is seven-foot-tall John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a towering black man convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. Coffey immediately shows himself to be a "gentle giant," of sorts, keeping to himself and crying on occasion. Soon enough, though, Coffey reveals his extraordinary healing powers by healing Paul's bladder infection and bringing a mouse back from the dead.

Doug Hutchinson, having oodles of fun, plays Percy, a vicious, sadistic guard who takes pleasure in injuring inmates, causes everyone else in the cellblock trouble and "knows people," preventing Paul or anybody else to do anything significant about his deviant behavior. What Percy wants is to be put "up front" for an execution; then, he promises, he will transfer himself to another government job and Paul will never hear from him again.

This doesn't sound like much of a plot and that's because it's not a plot: it's a situation. That's what makes The Green Mile sorta unique: it doesn't take us through a linear storyline; rather, it sets up a situation and observes as the characters move through it. And these are remarkable characters, some of the richest of the year. Hanks's Paul Edgecomb is fascinating and three-dimensional, a man with an understated, deeply personal crisis. Percy isn't much in terms of depth, but he's very fun to watch and even more fun to hate. The most engaging character in the film is Michael Clarke Duncan's John Coffey. Duncan deserves an Oscar nomination (though he in all likelyhood won't get it) for his performance which is genuinely touching and often devastating.

For over three hours I didn't dare take my eyes off the screen. There's no denying that The Green Mile is slow and yet it's surprisingly involving. Moments where essentially nothing is going on manage to be riveting; the more emotional scenes have unparalelled impact. Making a movie this long, this passive and this unrelentingly interesting is no small feat. It's a feat deserving of little gold men.

If there is one flaw here, and a reason I can't give the movie a flat "A", it's King's/Darabont's insistence on ramming hokey Christ imagery down our throat. The Christ metaphor is such a staple in "thoughtful" filmmaking that it seems hackneyed when employed. The Green Mile's otherwise extraordinarily powerful ending is hampered by it because we are forced to make an outside connection, an act that takes us partially out of the otherwordly experience this film provides.

Despite abominations by high-brow literary types, Stephen King is a very insightful author with a remarkable window into human nature. He makes keen observations, allowing his readers to tap into the human part of his stories, no matter how far-fetched they got in their horror aspects. This gets translated on celluloid when the films are done right. This one is more than right.

    Grade: A-

    ©1999 Eugene Novikov

    Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
    Before you buy.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews