If it doesn't hook you from the beginning, you're probably in for a long haul. At one hundred eighty minutes, a movie like this requires an attention span and a free evening. There have been longer pictures released this year, many with larger budgets. The Green Mile is, however, far and away the "biggest" movie of the year. Is it the best? No, not by a long shot, but here's the score.
By all conventional wisdom, this movie shouldn't work. On the downs:
- It's all a big, shameless play for the Oscars.
- Tom Hanks plays, once again, a saint. Roles like these may be the most financially sound, but his portfolio needs a little risk. Hanks needs to do the next David Cronenberg film or something.
- There's a Christ figure, John Coffey (played by Michael Clark Duncan), constantly weeping over the sins of mankind as he sits (with no subtle irony) on death row.
- There's not one but two evil demons: a sadistic guard (Doug Hutchison) who gets his kicks making others suffer, and a psychotic, filthy inmate (Sam Rockwell).
- All this and a cute little mouse, running around and being adorable while a harp is plucked playfully and mischievously on the soundtrack.
- The unnecessary prologue and epilogue. They may have worked in print, but as part of the movie they seemed out of place. They didn't add anything in the way of drama or character development. Like the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense, I felt the movie would've worked just as well without them.
- A bit of bedroom humor which, while funny, didn't really belong.
Yet, in spite of all these things (or perhaps with their help), I found The Green Mile to be an effective and entertaining drama. Here are the ups:
- Stephen King. Lord knows at least a dozen awful films have been made from his work, but this is one of his best stories. In the hands of a more purely populist writer, The Green Mile wouldn't have the same undercurrent of dread; in the epilogue, which contains an insight into one of the main characters that I will not reveal, a whiff of Stephen King's macabre sensibility comes out. Also, The Green Mile contains the single most horrifying execution I've seen on film.
- Frank Darabont. The director (and screenwriter) of The Green Mile is a craftsman, not a merchant. He knows when to employ "Neat Cinema" (early on, at the prison's outer guard shack, a camera follows a guard walking left, then another man going right, then a third man going left and picking up the telephone -- that's Neat), and when to just let it alone (the scene when John Coffey employs his healing powers on Melinda Moores (Patricia Clarkson) is directed and shot with a straight face and minimal directorial embellishments).
- Michael Clark Duncan. Extraordinarily tall, with arms like a tree trunk, Duncan won't be able to avoid being typecast, but here he's magnificent. John Coffey isn't a smart man, but he's strangely wise, preternaturally aware, and for all intents and purposes, is an ideal tragic figure. See if you don't get a bit choked up at the film's climax.
- Doug Hutchison. His character of the evil, sadistic guard Percy may be as one-dimensional as a Blair Witch, but Hutchison finds a way to make him seem real, even familiar.
- The pacing. Long films that feel hurried seem to take longer than ones that go at a proper speed. The Green Mile is a full, meaty story, and while you may feel sore in the behind when you leave, you won't feel wasted. Like "Titanic" and "Saving Private Ryan," the movie is of epic length but never boring.
In the final analysis, the movie is too creaky in parts to make it anywhere near my list of the year's best films, but this is a blight on no one's record. If this is "big Hollywood" glossy filmmaking, let me show my support for it.
Prison guards prepare for the execution of an innocent man who holds a secret. A man of towering height and girth, the wrongly accused man has a power...More at HotMovieSale.com
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