Three hours? Didn't seem like it.

Rating: Null/10 (17 January 2000)

The Green Mile was a movie that I really enjoyed. It had the flavor of the Shawshank Redemption in its general tone and in the music, but the movies aren't similar at all.
I could talk about the film, but nothing I'd say about it would be original here. I'm the 303rd reviewer of it here at IMDb and I'm sure I won't be the last.
But looking at some of the other comments makes me wonder what the hell people are thinking about when the lights go down. I can understand the talk about the length of the film, but one person said that he didn't like being force-fed someone else's ideas about religion. While no one could miss the parallel this film has to the life of Christ, why would you think that religion was being forced upon you? Did someone drag you to a theatre and make you stay for the entire 3 hours?
Another person was irritated that the movie didn't address the morality of capital punishment. The film was not even remotely about whether capital punishment is right or wrong. To its credit, it doesn't even hint at the morality of it. You simply accept that you're on death row and that there are executions.
And still another was mad that the death-row inmates were not all portrayed as evil people. Another thought that it should have been less of a fable. One person even complained that the bladder infection that Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) had was a stupid sub-plot! They must have been on their cellular phone for the first hour or something.
Why can't a movie just be a movie? Nothing more, nothing less. Just go in, watch it, and be entertained or not. Don't worry about where the idea for the story came from. Don't worry that some issue wasn't explored in a way you thought it should be unless of course that exploration would be plot critical. Some people seemed to be obsessed with punching holes in films instead of trying to enjoy them. Doing that is missing the point of every movie which is simply to entertain.
Oh yeah, the Green Mile? Very well done. Excellent performances all around. I especially liked Doug Hutchinson as Percy Wetmore (that's funny since he wet his peed himself). We've all known a little toilet bug like Percy. A must see...