THE MOVIE THAT WOULD NOT BE EDITED!!!

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2000)

Could it be that The Green Mile is really three hours long? It only feels like five or six. But seriously, folks. . . I could take cheap shots all day at this film, but I won't. There's plenty of more substantial things to dislike about it.
In The Green Mile, the normal routines of a death row cell block in Depression-era Louisiana are upset when John Coffey, a gigantic, yet meek child-murder convict arrives, bringing supernatural healing and empathic abilities. Coffey is a thinly-veiled religious figure (his initials are J.C., get it?), whose powers cause him to suffer on behalf of humanity. Paul Edgecomb, the morally-centered head guard of the block, is forced to consider issues of guilt, responsibility, and duty.
When asked for a last request, Coffey expresses his desire to see a "flicker movie," something he has only heard about. In the empty prison theater, he gets to see Fred Estaire and Ginger Rogers dance cheek-to-cheek in their 1935 film Top Hat. (Interestingly, it was the same scenes that Mia Farrow gazed at longingly at the close of Purple Rose of Cairo to distract her from the train wreck of her life.) To him, the dancers are "angels," and as he's strapped into the electric chair he intones, "I'm in heaven. . . ," the same line that Estaire sings. The movies, director Frank Darabount suggests somewhat self-importantly, are a spiritual media that can transport us into an afterlife.
In a film willing to shoulder the responsibility of a believable context, these ideas might bear fruit, but The Green Mile willfully avoids the complexities of its main topic, capital punishment. Darabount, acting like the Oscar-crazed filmmaker his critics accuse him of being, uses almost every scene in a mad attempt to jerk at the audience's heartstrings. Such a strategy leaves precious little room for the ambiguity that justifiably clings to the topic. Darabount has no choice but to portray the convicts (and the other characters, for that matter) as either noble or evil. With the exception of Coffey, we are not told what their crimes are; their only indication is the anonymous faces in the crowd observing the execution. These yawning gaps in context, in addition to the George Lucas morality, give the film something of the aura of a fairy tale, a distasteful precedent considering the importance of addressing the issues surrounding capital punishment with a firm grounding in reality.
Did I mention that this movie is long? Not only are we taken through every excruciating detail of each of the three executions, we also get to go through two dry runs. In lieu of subtlety, Darabount figures the way to our hearts is redundancy. Does anyone doubt it will work?