Credit where credit is due

Rating: 8/10 (5 September 2009)

The Green Mile is absolutely my favorite Stephen King movie. It is the only one that starts out well and continues being very good to the end. Many of the others seemed to start out well, had a good plot idea, held your interest, but then towards the end unraveled, almost as if someone was hurrying him to finish. The Green Mile was nearly flawless. The characters were well defined, and very well acted. We definitely came to have an opinion of them, some we liked very much and some we really did not like, especially "Wild Bill," could there be a character we dislike more? Percy was a very close second, someone we did not like at all. It made you wonder exactly which side of the bars Percy should have been on, as mean and nasty as he could be. I was actually surprised when I found out it was a Stephen King based novel. I don't mean to take away from his writing, once handed over to Hollywood, the person writing the screen play may not have an understanding how the characters were woven together and how important it was to leave the "weaving" completely unchanged to keep the tone of the story. I'm sure Stephen King is big enough now to get writers' approval of what has been done, if he's not writing the screenplay himself. The Green Mile was perfectly woven, the good guys were good, and the bad guys were bad, I mean you really did not like them at all. I didn't even like "Wild Bill" in the next movie he appeared in remembering the evil character he played in this film. I found it so disarming that the regular guards, Paul (Tom Hanks); Brutus (David Morse); Dean (Barry Pepper); and Harry (Jeffrey DeMunn) of "The Green Mile" were so calm, and made an effort to make an atmosphere pleasant for these men who were doomed to die anyway. I hadn't even thought about it one way or the other; they are bad men, why would we want to be civil with them at all? But the way they thought of them, they were found guilty and they are going to die, treating them like the animals they acted like was not necessary, they were already getting the maximum punishment, that provocation would only make them more dangerous, after all, they have nothing left to lose, it pays to treat them with dignity and respect, which had they ever been treated that way in the past maybe they wouldn't be there at all, keeping them calm and relaxed so that they are less trouble. They had a good thing going until Percy was transferred to The Mile. This man was sadistic, and felt he was "bullet-proof" as far as his job was concerned since his Mother was the Governor's wife. No rules applied to Percy, he did what he wanted when he wanted, there was a part of him that belonged on the other side of the bars. John Coffey saw this in him, and definitely saw Wild Bill for who he was, a "gift" John was tired of dealing with on a weekly, daily, hourly basis, seeing into the hearts and minds of people during the depression, heck, probably anytime, and seeing the darkness of souls is something I wouldn't consider a "gift" either. His true "gift" was that he could heal people. The scene in which he first "sees" what is in the Warden's wife and then removes it is very powerful. You see her at first visibly very ill and not in her right mind, then you see John Coffey take it out and she looks like herself again. She knows she is grateful to him, but not why; it is a very moving scene. John my not seem smart but he sure does the smart thing; he takes the brain tumor from the warden's wife and then gives it to Percy, who then takes out his gun out and shoots "Wild Bill," he got both cruel men with one single act. It was true justice. Then Paul (Tom Hanks) and the other guards come to realization that they are going to have to kill this man; knowing he is innocent, and understanding that he has a gift to heal people; but they do not know what cost this gift has, so they don't understand he'd rather end it all so he can stop hearing all the bad things in people's minds. He is a black man in 1930's, so kindness is not what he sees in those minds. Just for being who he is will automatically bring out the worst of white people in the South. He'd consider it a favor if they would put and end to it all, but to give Paul a glimpse of what he sees everyday he "shows" Paul what he's seen to convince him that killing him would be like putting down a wounded animal. Putting people down must not be a very good job, but like the rest of the earth's species, there are many born with malady's that make them unfit to move with the regular heard. If there was a way to simply "exile" them from the populous, like the animal kingdom does, though many do also simply kill them. But if you do this for a living, it must be very difficult if you do not have an attitude and set of standards to stick to that makes it as simple as it can be. Best Stephen King movie I've ever seen, it is a very good movie, a little dark, but if you watch the news every night, you know the dark side exists in all of us, and shows itself more often in many. Very good movie!