# Green Mile, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Mac VerStandig

    The Green Mile
    2 Stars (Out of 4)
    Reviewed by Mac VerStandig
    critic@moviereviews.org
    http://www.moviereviews.org
    December 2, 1999
    USA Release Date - December 17, 1999

A copy of this review can be found at = http://www.moviereviews.org/the_green_mile.htm

---Starting on Christmas Eve you can hear Mac VerStandig's movie reviews on the radio in Portland, Maine once a week in addition to reading them on Moviereviews.org. Details on time and dial placement still to come. Stay tuned!---

The Green Mile, the film Warner Bros. is grooming for best picture glory, commits the same sin as Paramount's prized contender Angela's Ashes: the movie uses the emotional sentiments that death presents as a crutch of support for an otherwise weak and underdeveloped production. Both films also run too long, with Angela's Ashes weighing in at 140 minutes and The Green Mile at 190 (that is 11,400 painful tic-tocks).

Set in a Louisiana penitentiary during the great depression, The Green Mile, based on Stephen King's novel, is a story of death row inmates and guards. The film's title is the term used for the walk from an inmate's cell to the electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky."

The protagonist is Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks who merits a best actor nomination), the head guard. Having walked the mile numerous times and witnessed more deaths than one man ever should, Paul has come to respect most of the inmates and offers them whatever dignity he can, especially in their final hours. Warner Bros.' deceptive marketing campaign tells you that Paul forms a special relationship with one inmate in particular, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan, deserving of a best supporting actor nomination), who possess magical healing powers. Coffey does have mystical abilities but there is no special relationship (or, if there is, it is on the editing room floor).

Rather than develop Coffey or explore Edgecomb's personal life in depth (his wife seems interesting, but we hardly get to know her), the film chooses to focus its attention on another guard and another inmate, both cruel people. (Caution: SEMI-SPOILER AHEAD!) These two characters are as clichE9 as Hollywood can make them. The inmate is responsible for the = murders that Coffey clearly didn't commit, something that seems a tad too ironic since there are only three inmates. It is also rather coincidental that the same revelation takes place in The Shawshank Redemption, a film from the same writer and director. The guard is single-dimensionally cruel to others, emotionless and death loving, making him the perfect Superman villain. But this film is neither a bird, a plane nor Superman, it is a serious death row drama and the character doesn't fit.

The Green Mile doesn't introduce Coffey's Cinderella qualities for the first hour and a quarter, the length of time that many films take to reach their conclusion. Even after that, the magic is a limited aspect of the movie until the end. Cinderella and death row probably don't mix in the first place, but not giving the silver slippers a fighting chance is self-destructive and yet another argument for a further development of Coffey.

The Green Mile could have been the contender that Warner Bros. wants it to be; the material is there. By cutting the evil guard and inmate you free up a lot of time. Fill some of the time with more Coffey and some of it with more of Edgecomb's home life. Stop there. Cut the movie between 120 and 135 minutes and this critic would consider the final product a modern classic.

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