Overlong, incoherent, repulsive and ridiculous

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 1999)

I found "The Green Mile" to be a massive disappointment in comparison with Frank Darabont's 1994 adaptation of another Stephen King story, also set in a prison, "The Shawshank Redemption". "The Green Mile" has a running time of just over three hours to tell a tale which could have been told more compellingly in 2 to 2.5 hours. You cannot avoid the feeling that the filmmakers had their eye on Oscar glory rather than making a fine film, and one of the unfortunate rules of thumb in this area is that long films have a better chance of winning than shorter competitors. Alas, there seems to be ample evidence of quantity defeating quality: "Gandhi" beating "Tootsie" in 1982 and "Out of Africa" beating "Witness" in 1985, to name but two.
Unlike many Stephen King stories, "The Shawshank Redemption" had no supernatural elements. This was a major advantage in restraining the crazier excesses of the writer's imagination and making the film touching and credible. Unfortunately, "The Green Mile" has a miracle-working prisoner on death row. The wonder worker has the initials J.C., just in case you missed the crass symbolism of an innocent healer being unjustly condemned to death.

Most miracles tend to be arbitrary favours bestowed for no apparently consistent reason by a capricious Deity. Why do only a tiny fraction of people who go to Lourdes get cured, in comparison with the huge numbers of apparently equally devout and deserving pilgrims? Here, the saintly (if mentally challenged) John Coffey is apparently able to cure the terminally ill on demand. The limitations of 1930s medicine are cruelly highlighted. Tom Hanks' noble prison officer character, Paul Edgecombe, has a painful and embarrassing bladder problem which would probably be cleared up quickly by modern antibiotics. In 1934 he faces the alternatives of nausea-inducing sulfa drugs, or allowing Nature to take its slow, distressing course in healing him. J.C. can, of course, cure him in seconds by laying on of hands, absorbing the "poison" into his own body and exhaling it through his mouth in the visible form of droplets.
The good John was apparently aware of his powers (which extend so far as performing a Lazarus-resurrection job on a badly crushed mouse) before he entered prison. This gives rise to hundreds of obvious questions, such as why he did not do a similar Lazarus job on the two murdered little girls with whom he was caught. Perhaps that was beyond even his powers, for some unexplained reason. More seriously, his supernatural gift highlights countless idiocies in the plot development.
This J.C. was apparently not even immaculately conceived and born in a stable; he seems to have been delivered into the world fully grown to his 6.5 feet, 300 pound-plus bulk. He apparently had no prior life history before he was caught with the bloodstained corpses of the little girls in his arms and obviously had not demonstrated his healing powers anywhere, as otherwise he would surely have become quickly reknown as a miracle worker, at least in a local area. Even after he has cured the prison warden's wife of a terminal brain tumour in front of several witnesses, he is still apparently on his way to the electric chair. Even worse, he seems (again, for an unexplained reason) to be unable to "exhale" the poison from the brain tumour and is terminally ill himself. Never fear, he is able to "exhale" the illness into a suitably vile prison officer. This infusion of the bad vapours apparently affects the villain's brain in a non-fatal way - we last see him incarcerated in a mental institution.
This cure of the prison warden's wife is yet another dumb episode which prolongs the excessive running time. Apparently, the combined brainpower of all the officers on Death Row could not devise a legal way of getting the wife and saintly John together for a healing session - they have to smuggle John out of prison to the warden's home in the middle of the night in a complex operation. Also, even when it is clear that John can do cures on demand, no one suggests that his abilities be publicly proven. If he cured a few dying children, would that not help his case for a reprieve, or at least a stay of execution? Well, it might, but it would also impede the risibly bogus plot mechanics where Saint Tom Hanks and his fellow officers end up executing an innocent man, have dreadful pangs of conscience, etc, etc.
The vile prison officer must be one of the most thankless "bad guy" roles foisted on any actor. Doug Hutchison does his best with the loathsome Percy Wetmore and occasionally suggests some humanity within his worthless carcass. I assume his unfortunate surname comes from his loss of bladder control under stress, clearly shown in one scene. However, much of the time the script portrays him as a coward, liar, sadist, manipulator and bully, constantly invoking his influential relatives who will take terrible reprisals against anyone at the prison who offends him. This is yet another unexplained imbecility in the script: if this creep has such powerful connections, why is he doing such a horrible and dangerous job on Death Row? Why have his relatives not already landed him a safe and cushy desk job elsewhere in the State sector? The only motive implied is that he gets a kick out of seeing people suffer and wants the chance to witness, and indeed supervise, an execution close-up.
Of course, poisonous Percy does get this chance. In one of the most gratuitously horrible scenes you are ever likely to witness in a cinema, he deliberately sabotages the execution of a prisoner by NOT wetting a sponge in saline solution before it is placed on the condemned man's head. Thus the electrical contact is imperfect, and the victim screams out in ghastly agony as he is slowly fried alive. It makes an unforgettable scene in support of abolishing the death penalty, or at any rate this form of it. I suppose it is one of the few points you can make in favour of this abysmal film.
Other points in its favour include the excellent cinematography, set and costume design and a very fine cast, especially Tom Hanks, David Morse and James Cromwell. It is a great shame that, as in so many films, the enormous talents of both cast and crew have been wasted on such repulsive and ridiculous dreck. I would give it 3 out of 10, and those three points purely for technical and acting competence.