Spiritually Uplifting, Yet Overall, A Green Bore...

Rating: 5/10 (12 December 1999)

This highly anticipated film from writer-director Frank Darabont touches on so many aspects of human nature and of human feelings that it cannot satisfy on every level. THE GREEN MILE is a long film, a film that you realize is long. This is not good. Darabont, director of the great SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, thankfully does not try to reenact that picture here. This is like SHAWSHANK turned inside out. The guards at the Louisiana State prison are "nice" (with the exception of one), and the hero (the incredibly impressive Michael Clarke Duncan) "John Coffey" is original like Tim Robbins in SHAWSHANK, but not as resourceful. He does, however, have an incredible gift that is the backbone for how the audience will feel about him and the predicament he is placed in for the next 3 hours.
The film is simply overkill and tries to dabble in too many different notions of the human condition within these prison walls. It was done so much more precisely in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION that you can hardly believe the same guy made the two movies. GREEN MILE would have been better off staying almost entirely on the relationship between Tom Hanks and Duncan, which is really all you will care about. The performances are all good, but too many characters are introduced and the inevitable is very clearly seen early on. You pretty much know what will happen to each character based on the simple Hollywood variations on good guys and bad guys.
Duncan, who plays the massive African-American man accused of rape and murder and sentenced to spend his last days on the "green mile", the cell block which leads to the electric chair, is quite a find. He is sure to get Oscar notoriety and deservedly so. He reminded me a bit of Brock Peters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, who was in a very similar situation. The two performances combined paint one of the ultimate portrayals on film of racial injustice in this country, especially in the 1930's. The film eventually dips into the supernatural quite impressively and surprisingly, but it is marred by the frequent attempts at humor and the sometimes annoying sub-plots. See for yourself and decide whether or not you would have edited it differently.
Long pauses and drawn out characterizations are a drain on the viewer's senses as you watch. There is a gruesome execution scene that quite frankly indents the moral hypocrisy that is the electric chair, into the mind's eye. The scene is shot with such force and brutality, it is hard to watch. This brings up the point of the film's muddled message about the wrongs of capital punishment. Are the guards really against it, or is it just when they have grown close to a prisoner when they don't like it? Again, decide for yourself.
I was disappointed by THE GREEN MILE. It will no doubt garner a lot of award attention wrongfully. Frank Darabont loves making films about prison but maybe he has swung just one too many times at that ball. At times while watching the flick, I thought I should "get busy living, or get busy dying," as said "Red" in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. The movie is that boring and that drawn out. There are exceptional moments (like the tie-in to the year 1935 and the film TOP HAT), but finally, you must have some more passion and more life on the screen for such a story to really work.
Rating: **1/2