Entertaining...BUT!!!

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2000)

It seems as if Stephen King had a dream one night after seeing TITANIC and FRANKENSTEIN and reading OF MICE AND MEN and maybe even the BIBLE. He or the producer must have also recently viewed FORREST GUMP and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. GREEN MILE, amazingly enough, combines elements of all of those films, books, and ideas.
What we have here is an entertaining but completely contrived parable with an obvious Christ-figure (another character in movies or literature with the initials J.C.) and his chief preacher of the "word" named Paul whom he met, not on the Road to Damascus, but on the "green mile."
The only thing that makes this unbelievable potboiler work is the excellent cast. The plot, by itself, is overly manipulative and has loopholes big enough for J.C. himself to walk through without hitting his head. But then, after all, we must remember that this is a Stephen King story.