Poor younger sibling

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2001)

Stephen King, Frank Darabont, jail. These are the key words that connect The Shawshank Redemption`, one of America's most popular movies and The Green Mile`. There are slight differences in the base ideas of the two films and for me  probably the greatest fan of Shawshank`  exactly these are also the differences in quality.
Darabont's film no. 1 was too perfectly made and his no. 2 reminds too much of it without being able to compete with it. Somehow the fantastic elements in no. 2 appear disturbing to someone who remembers how well no. 1 worked without anything supernatural. Actually, it's not Frank Darabont's fault that The Green Mile` falls behind Shawshank`; it's Stephen King's. For instance, there is also a twist in the end in no. 2, but it's definitely not as great as the one in no. 1.
Something Darabont hasn't forgot is how to tell a story in cinema and how to produce an authentic atmospehere, though I don't think that there were so many humane prison officers at that time. Michael Clark Duncan was a real fluke: He had no particularly great role at all but he stole the show from everybody. Unfortunately (or luckily), he has a too extraordinary look to get ordinary roles in the future; so we won't see him very often. Tom Hanks did a good job; of course, anyone else could have played his role equally well.
The Green Mile` is a long, fascinatic epos with not two but many outstanding actors, slowly and patiently directed by a man who seems to specialize in makeing films of Stephen King's jail books. Logically, the next movie should come in 2004.