Heavy handed

Rating: 1/10 (5 January 2001)

Made with little subtlety, grace, or wit, suffers from the same disease as Shawshank in seeking profundity in every vignette. Whereas I could overlook some of the preposterous and contrived situations in Shawshank and just enjoy the movie, the Green Mile just seemed contrived except for a few scenes and characters. Of course it has redeeming qualities about it, namely Duncan's performance and the gripping execution scenes.

I like Shawshank alot despite its flaws, however The Green Mile is just plain mediocre, not one I would ever want to sit through again. It could have been a decent 90 minute movie. The far too long and frequent mouse vignettes detracted and cost the movie momentum, there is no need to show a guy pee 10 times in the movie, we understand that it hurts when he pees, enough already!. The evil prison guard was just far too simple and one-dimensional a character to the point of absurdity which eliminates the impact of his comeupance at the end, contrast this with the very satisfying end to Shawshank's prison warden (a far more interesting, faceted, and believable character). The end was diluted as well, I think the movie went a scene too far at the end into some fuzzy preaching, as a viewer it really wasn't necessary, the impact of Duncan's end on the Hanks character and the viewer is strong and moving and the movie should have ended there instead of having a scene to explain to the audience (as if to a slow fifth-grader) the truth of the moment.