Not Shawshank

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2001)

As Stephen King adaptions go, this is somewhere in the middle. While patently no Pet Semetary, it's certainly no Carrie either. the book was published in several instalments, giving the whole enterprise a rambling feel. Darabont tries his best to emulate this, but his incessant desire to include every damn paragraph is just one of the film's flaws. The mysticism which seems believable enough on page just seems completely stupid on screen. This is all without mentioning the crude racial stereotypes, the subserviant black man dying for the whites, and the sub-exorcist subplot. it's not bad, but where shawshank took its meagre source material and expanded on it, Green Mile flounders under the weight of King's words. A disappointment.