Like the drink, only not spelled the same way

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 1999)

A black man, sitting on a riverbank, wails loudly that he was too late to save them as he holds two limp, white little girls, one on each of his mighty arms. Much later in the movie, he calmly says that they were killed because of their love. In between these scenes we learn much about John Coffey and the Deep South in the brilliant yet faulty film, "The Green Mile". Stephen King's serial novel has been brought to screen with the same searing portrayal of racial bigotry as "Places in the Heart", with the same realism and critique of capital punishment as "Dead Man Walking", and with the added supernatural elements that are hallmark to Stephen King's works. Yet "The Green Mile" is a long film (over three hours) that loses its special significance when it goes off focus. Why spend an inordinate time dealing with Paul Edgecombe's urinary tract infection, why go overboard with detailing Mr. Jingles, and why does Percy, the sadist guard, seem to have as much screen presence as John Coffey? The real story should be between Edgecombe and Coffey and yet there are too many distracting things in their way. To the film's credit, when it does spend time with racial prejudices, it spares no one. The arresting scene between Edgecombe and the lawyer defending Coffey (played by Gary Sinise), in which black people are compared to dogs that don't know any better, explains much about Southern philosophy. When Coffey is called upon the save the warden's wife, a remarkable change of events occur from the cold, initial reception to the final warm enlightenment. When Edgecombe confronts his terrible guilt with Coffey, their commiseration is both tearful and heart wrenching. "The Green Mile" is blest with veteran actors playing their roles naturally and securely, from Tom Hanks to Michael Clark Duncan to David Morse to Bonnie Hunt to James Cromwell. "The Green Mile" is a good but not great movie because it, ironically, tried to be too faithful to the novel. Better if it had focused more on the special relationship between Edgecombe and the man who could save others but not himself.