The Green Mile proved that Stephen King can create amazing stories beyond the graphic horror he is so well-known for.

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2000)

If you are a true Stephen King fan, and read the book before you saw the movie, I feel that it is safe to say that you are one of the 44.4% (at the time of this review, anyway) of voters who gave the Green Mile 10 stars. I have seen virtually every single one of Stephen King's films and have read roughly 30 of his novels, and I think that The Green Mile was by far the best screen adaptation of any of his books, as well as one of the most intellectual and thought provoking stories.
Tom Hanks is an incredible actor, and he played a very convincing supervisory prison guard. The fact that the film was so long gave the audience an excellent opportunity to see what kinds of people the characters are. By the end of the film, you KNOW those guys, and that is one of the most important aspects of filmmaking as a whole. The audience needs to feel a connection with the characters, they need to care about them. It is heartbreaking to see Tom Hanks' character Paul Edgecomb in such pain because of his urinary infection, and when John Coffey cures it, you feel so grateful for it that it may as well have been your own infection. That is the kind of thing that makes a film like this so great. It appealed to the King fans because of the relatively brief but satisfactory violence, but it also appealed to the kinds of people who want to see a good story unfold when they watch a movie.
The Green Mile is not a film to be overlooked. Stephen King is now officially proving that although the majority of his films fit firmly in the genre of horror (with the exception of other great films like Dolores Claiborne and The Shawshank Redemption), he is more than capable of creating a truly touching and entertaining movie without relying even a little bit on gratuitous sex or violence or profanity or gore or blood or monsters...