The best film adaptation to ever grace the screen.

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 1999)

I read "The Green Mile" about a week before the movie opened here. About 60 pages from the end I began crying for the 3rd time since I had begun reading it. I did not stop crying until ten minutes after I finished the book. The book is completely compelling and touching. I consider it to be one of the best fiction books that I have ever read. I was not sure if the movie would be able to live up to what I had seen in my mind while reading. On the Friday it opened, my fiancee and I went to the first showing. 3 hours and 10 minutes later, the two of us emerged, tear stained and even closer to one another than ever before. Frank Darabont and cast have created a miracle of their own in this work. The movie captures every emotion that Stephen King intended to be caught. Emotions that I was never aware that could be caught on film. I have seen reviews and heard opinions about this movie. Most agree with me, masterpiece, work of art, and so on. However, there are some people who think that this movie is self-indulgent, over-done, and way too long. Ironically enough, these are the same people who absolutely adored "Titanic", which was self-indulgent and far too caught up in it's own grandiose image. It was also a 3 hour movie, and it did not capture in those 3 hours any of the emotion that the Green Mile captures within the first 30 minutes. Tom Hanks, Michael Duncan (Bear, to those who saw "Armageddon")David Morse, and Bonnie Hunt all helped bring to life this absolutely compelling, stunning, and emotionally wrenching picture. Bravo to Darabont and cast for a beautiful job. If this, like the equally wonderful "Shawshank", is snubbed at Oscar time, it will be a disgrace to the movie-making business.