Racist and predictable

Rating: 3/10 (5 February 2000)

Frank Darabont's follow up to the Shawshank Redemption is a poorly written and painfully unoriginal story.
For starters, the Noble Savage stereotype is racist at best. A character that is misunderstood by society and doesn't want to live in that society due to the character's extreme moral idealism (i.e. edward scissorhands, powder, etc.) is far from new.
Coffey's character is not the only one that is one dimensional. Pretty much all the characters' dispositions are made to be one of two things: good or bad. There are no gray lines and it is obvious who the audience is supposed to hate and who they are supposed to root for. It's boring and childish. The frenchman, Michael Jeter, is made up so that we feel completely sorry for him. We're not even allowed to know what his crime was because then we might not love him so much.
The prison guards are the most loving forgiving group of prison guards that have ever lived. Hell, they're the most loving forgiving people that ever lived. A prisoner spits in Tom Hanks's face and he actually does nothing about it? My grandmother isn't that nice.
Stop reading here if you have not seen the movie.
And wasn't it convenient that that prisoner, Sam Rockwell, just happened to be the actual criminal behind Coffey's crime? And when they "caught" Coffey with the girls, can anyone honestly say that if a black man was found with two dead white girls that they would not shoot him? Black men in the 30's, and especially in the South, would be killed for being seen in public with a white woman, much less killing a white child.
And when Coffey does die, Tom Hanks doesn't put too much effort into stopping the execution. He just asks Coffey what he should do, and Coffey says nothing, so that's what he does. Of course Coffey must die, because in all racist Noble Savage films the savage must die so that his white savior can learn a valuable lesson.
And where is the warden at this point? He said he can't stop the execution, but I find that implausible. I'm sure he could at least try to save the man who saved his wife. And wasn't that a plot twist that was hard to see coming? I also found it interesting that when Coffey healed her, he also did her hair and put makeup on her.
The whole movie has no real continuity being that it was adopted from a serial novel. The movie could have ended in about five different places and the audience wouldn't have minded.
The only interesting element of this movie is its ending which certainly does not save it. I suppose this movie is more Stephen King's fault than Darabont's, but regardless the movie is a disappointment in front the backdrop of all the superb movies that have been released with it in the past few months.