The rare film that succeeds in spite of itself

Rating: 7/10 (13 October 2003)

When just about everything else comes together in a movie, gaping flaws in the premise can often be overcome. Such is the case in Frank Darabont's second Stephen King prison adaptation, The Green Mile. It's not just that it's hard to believe a mob of white people with shotguns would have turned a suspected black child killer over to the authorities in 1935 Louisiana, but this is a questionable plot point to start a goofily supernatural story. This is not to say that a movie can't be done well if it features a Christ metaphor (E.T.) or a somewhat off-the-wall supernatural happening that even the characters seem to be having difficulty reconciling (Field of Dreams), but The Green Mile does not carry its premise as well, in no small part due to how ridiculous it looks when Michael Clarke Duncan grabs Tom Hanks for a minute and then expels a whole bunch of black things. (Apparently all illnesses are caused by evil and not, say, bacteria or viruses.)
Regrettably, The Green Mile doesn't quite get past the goofiness of the story. It has some decent (if obvious) lessons to offer, but they're somewhat obscured by the heavy-handed allegory. The game cast, led by a strong Hanks and filled out with numerous solid performances, does what it can to make up for that problem - and they're mostly successful, also helped by good cinematography and an atmospheric score by Thomas Newman (though Darabont might have avoided some of the inevitable comparisons to The Shawshank Redemption - not nearly all, but perhaps some - if he hadn't hired the same composer and then allowed him to make half his cues sound pulled from the earlier film).
The film's earnestness as regards the story is almost its undoing, but the cast and crew mostly bail out the narrative shortcomings. The film doesn't even drag at over three hours, which is impressive. The Green Mile is truly a best-case scenario for defining the term "elevating the material."