Another moving film from Darabont and King

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 1999)

The Green Mile caught me by surprise. Being that The Shawshank Redemption is one of my all-time favorite films, I went into this film expecting an attempt to capitalize on "Shawshank". Man, was I wrong. Aside from the prison settings, these two films could never be confused with one another. While Shawshank is about the triumph of the human spirit, The Green Mile is more about who we are at our core. Are we good or evil? Can we change who we are? Why are bad things allowed to happen? There are some imbedded references to Christ, even symbolized in John Coffey, where we see the sacrifice of His dying for our sins. The cynics out there may choose to smirk at these actions, but I think that they would be making a knee-jerk mistake. This film makes no judgements about us as a society or any such nonsense, but rather tries to make us look at ourselves, individually, and how we relate to the rest of the world.
Hanks does his best work in a few years. Michael Duncan and David Morse, I think, are the most compelling, however. I've heard criticism that the film is "too long," I don't really know how to repond to that argument other than to ask the person if they came to that conclusion before having seen the film. If a film grabs and interests you, then holds that attention, then there is no way one should be able to make that claim about The Green Mile. It is the length it should be and needed to be. I enjoyed it immensely and will put in in my top ten for the year.
One last note to the cynics among us: cynicism does not automatically make one smart or thoughtful. In fact, it can be a good thing. I only say that to remind you that just because a film, book, song, or event is about something "good" does not automatically make it bad or untrue.