THE GREEN MILE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In a Louisiana prison in 1935 a black
giant sentenced to death adds a touch of magic to
the death row cell block. Frank Darabont returns
to writing/directing a Stephen King prison story
with THE GREEN MILE. He spends three hours on his
film and gives us some moving moments, but the
dramatic payoff is never strong enough to justify
the length and the artificiality of his new work.
What Darabont did naturally in THE SHAWSHANK
REDEMPTION seems far more contrived here. This is
a decent film when a very good film was expected.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
Five years ago Frank Darabont released THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION a film he wrote and directed based on a Stephen King story set in a prison. I picked that as the best film of its year. Now Darabont returns to that territory with what promised to be a powerful Stephen King story, but one which is not compelling enough to justify the film's three-hour length. Certainly the payoff, when it comes, is moving. But it is undercut by the introduction of mystical elements and by heavy-handed stylistic touches. The addition of supernatural elements to a gritty story of human experience seems ill-conceived.
At a home for the elderly one resident Paul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer) has a number of strange behaviors. Every day he gets out and takes a walk in the woods. Seeing the film TOP HAT on television reduces him to tears. Finally he tells his story in private to a friend. In 1935 he was the lead guard on death row at a Cold Mountain Penitentiary in Louisiana (here he is played by Tom Hanks). The team of guards was made up of decent men most of whom just wanted the best for the convicts under their care. The one exception is the sadistic Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), the governor's wife's nephew. [No mention is made of Senator Huey Long who was a virtual dictator in Louisiana. It was under his auspices political appointments like Percy's were made. The governor that year was Long's handpicked replacement when three years earlier in the middle of his term Long vacated the office for a seat in the US Senate. Long was at the height of his power at the point this film was set. Change was fast in coming, however. This film is set in July. A little over a month after the events of this film, on the night of September 8th, 1935, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss assassinated Long in the State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge.]
The story really begins when John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan)a huge black man is brought to the cell block having been convicted of raping and murdering two young girls. Paul cannot believe that this giant child-man who is afraid of the dark could be a murderer. The film slowly develops the stories of some of the inmates and guards. For a long time the script neglects Coffey whose angel-like presence is felt over the entire cell-block but who does little to interact with people.
Darabont's script apparently wanted to carry over from the novel the feeling that the viewer really knows the inmates as individuals and cares about them. But the characterization comes slowly and too frequently characters are dispatched quickly. The one inmate not well characterized is Coffey, the one who would be most interesting to know. Our reactions to Coffey come mostly from stereotypes borrowed from other films. That is the problem with too many of the main characters. We do not really understand Percy at the end of the film. Nor do we really understand Wild Bill.(Sam Rockwell of JERRY AND TOM), a wild animal of a man. Even Paul is not a character of much depth or wisdom. He is simply a good and decent man.
Almost the entire film is shot with a heavy yellowish filter that blocks out any bright light and artificially casts a pallor on the film and calls attention to itself. In THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION Darabont's team created a prison that looked like a prison of the period. This is a longer film and most of the film takes place in the one cell block and the room of the electric chair. While the confinements are not claustrophobic, they do start to become tiresome after a while.
Tom Hanks is reasonable as the decent and likable prison guard, a welcome change from usual negative stereotypes. A man with grown children, he looks a little young for the role and the accent never sounds exactly right. His second in command is David Morse as Brutus "Brutal" Howell. Morse is a large quiet actor familiar from THE CROSSING GUARD. He his tall and calm image gives him the air of a blond Gary Cooper. James Cromwell has been a familiar face for many years, but since BABE he has been getting more major roles. Here he plays a prison warden with the requisite dignity. Another familiar face in a very small role is Gary Sinese.
The lineage of THE GREEN MILE is excellent, but the film itself is only decent and probably could have been more effective at a two hour length. I rate is a favorable but disappointed 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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