Long and saccharine

Rating: 4/10 (18 September 2004)

This bloated and soggy piece of work is so far from earning a number 2 spot on the IMDb that I have to imagine that Stephen King has bought votes for it. Trite , mawkish, shallow, unconvincing, ugly... How much more can I say about its awfulness? Morgan Freeman is tolerable, Tim Robbins is not. There is a romantic glow to the cinematography that is really inappropriate if the main characters are heterosexual. If they aren't there is an unexplored subtext poisoning the base of the movie. There is nothing else about this movie that makes a lick of sense: emotional, dramatic, logical, racial, penological. Rips off the Count of Monte Cristo and Huckleberry Finn and cheapens and flattens them. Its appeal escapes me utterly. For the love of God, sink this film!