This Film Has Been PERFECTLY Cast!

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 1999)

As I reflect on the film, I keep coming back to one basic thought. It is the thought that struck me about 20 minutes in: This is a film that has been perfectly cast.
It has been four days since I last saw Darabont and Tattersall's The Green Mile and it still hasn't quite all sunk in. I had read Stephen King's serials while recovering from back surgery. The week before surgery, my girlfriend told me that the people who made Shawshank Redemption were adapting another King story and that it would star Tom Hanks and that big guy from Armageddon. So, finding myself confined to my bed, I started reading. I was finished within a day.
I like delude myself a little. I like to think I know a few things about film and I could be a director, you know? When I read good stories, I like to picture which actors would be good for which parts. It was the casting of James Cromwell as The Warden that iced the cake for me. That was one I didn't expect. I thought he would be playing Irish Police Chiefs until he keeled over. Not that playing a southern Prison Warden is casting against type exactly, but he still puts in a nice performance. As does everyone in the film. This must have been a fun film to make.
The only thing that I didn't like about the film was that it explained too much to the audience. So much can be said with just shot sequence and gesture. Sometimes dialogue gets in the way of things that can't be communicated with speech.
Still, I cried like Nancy Karrigan.