"The Green Mile" Is A Lemon!

Rating: 7/10 (12 September 2008)

Stephen King is a good writer, but he isn't one of my favorite authors. Please don't misinterpret my comments about Mr. King. Indisputably, King has a knack for knitting gripping horror yarns, but the warp factor in this fiction dilutes any satisfaction lately that his endings furnish. The twisted nature of good and evil that permeates his plots makes them as lurid as gory car accidents. You don't so much read Stephen King to enjoy a catharsis as you do to experience necrophobia.
Frank Darabont made his Hollywood feature film debut five years ago as the director of "The Shawshank Redemption." Derived from a King novella, "The Shawshank Redemption" became one of the top-grossing films of 1994, surpassing even "Pulp Fiction!" When I saw "The Shawshank Redemption" and later raved about it, little did I know that King had a claw in it. Incredibly, Darabont performed a miracle on "Shawshank" and King. Not only did he make it palatable, but he also created a classic with a dramatically satisfying resolution. The good guys triumphed, and the bad guys got what they justly deserved! A Stephen King movie that neither grossed me out nor cheated me is an exercise in rare artistry.
Although "The Green Mile" shares similarities with "The Shawshank Redemption," the former falls short of the latter. A prison serves as the setting for each movie, and a black man and a white guy form a close relationship. Each film explores the themes of good and evil and the fragility of the human condition. Unlike the thoughtfully-paced and trimly-crafted "Shawshank," Darabont wallows indulgently in King's source material. King readers will applaud the reverence that Darabont lavishes on the literary master of the macabre. Nevertheless, "The Green Mile" is a lemon that wears out its welcome long before it ends. Despite a terrific cast and its atmospheric production values, "The Green Mile" is far too long, far too loquacious, and far too morbid. While this death row drama succeeds as an above-average character study, "The Green Mile" could have been improved had Darabont left half of it on the cutting room floor.
Not only did Darabont direct "The Green Mile," but he also penned the screenplay. Unimaginatively, he drags out everything ad nauseam. "The Green Mile" clocks in at an appalling 187 minutes! Moreover, those three hours and seven minutes lack velocity. The initial 45 minutes elapse without complication, but the remaining 142 minutes lurch about in fits and starts. You'll be checking your watch at the two hour mark and wondering why the film has not made greater progress. Darabont dramatizes so much questionable material that he doesn't have time to accelerate either the momentum or urgency.
Eventually, the shopworn plotting degenerates so much that you want to fast forward through those scenes that clog up the action. Darabont seems lost himself. "The Green Mile" circles rather than moves in a straight line. He resorts to standard symbolic clichÃ©s, such as John Coffey's initials. Moreover, Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan of "Armageddon) acts a Christ figure of sorts, because he was unfairly imprisoned for crimes he did not commit. When Coffey heals one guard and resurrects an animal, the comparison between Christ and Coffy is blatant. Movie rule #1: Animals must never die! Later, Coffey passes along part of his powers to Edgcomb whose first name was Paul. Catch the religious significance? The realism clashes unevenly with the fantasy. The "Hogan's Heroes" antics are entertaining, but too much time is wasted on other characters that add nothing to the plot. Darabont directs as if he were watching a mini-series.
Indeed, "The Green Mile" boasts some powerfully emotional scenes, but the misguided scenes outnumber them. While confined largely to death row, "The Green Mile" sprawls with considerable ethos, passion, and scope. Darabont weaves elements from "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962), "Powder" (1995), and "E.T: The Extraterrestrial" (1982). Darabont relates the story in one marathon flashback. Since Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks of "Forrest Gump") never faces death, the flashback proves an acceptable storytelling device rather than anti-climactic, as it would be in lesser films where the hero appears in constant jeopardy. Edgecomb lives in a retirement home when we see him at first. He attends a screening of the Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers' musical "Top Hat" (1935) in the facility. The memories that "Top Hat" triggers sends Edgecomb out of the room in tears. A lady friend rushes to Paul's side, and he regales her with his exploits as a prison guard in the 1930s.
Characters with depth and strength walk "The Green Mile." The action unfolds during the Great Depression in 1935 at Louisiana's Cold Mountain Prison where a gigantic "Of Mice and Men" type African-American itinerant receives the death penalty for killing two little white girls. As the Chief of Guards on Death Row, Paul Edgecomb treats the inmates with respect and dignity. He supervises the arrival of John Coffey in E-Block. Coffey towers like Goliath over Edgecomb and his crew of guards, and he has to bend over to enter his cell. During Coffey's sojourn at Cold Mountain, Edgecomb discovers the miracles can occur in the most unlikely places.
Sadly, the unsavory moments in "The Green Mile" sabotage the memorable ones. Occasionally, you may even feel a mite green around the gills. The squeamish should look the other way during the electrocution scenes, especially when Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter of "True Crime") dies in the chair. Of course, no American movie about life-behind-bars could resist commentary on capital punishment. Indeed, prison movies often qualify as thinly-veiled polemics against the death penalty. Clearly, the people at Warner Brothers who made "The Green Mile" deplore the death penalty, but they relish poetic justice. At the last minute, The Green Mile" wades a little too deeply into the philosophical quagmire with its revelations about the protagonist. Altogether, the audience doesn't get any time off for good behavior.