The Green Mile

Based on a Stephen King novel and scripted by Darabont, The Green Mile is the sort of film that will polarise opinion. There'll be those who get hooked by its metaphysical message (which to put it bluntly is a re-working of the Christ story - John Coffey/J.C. get it?) and those who dismiss it as heavy-handed sentimentalism. In truth it's some of both: on the one hand it speaks to our desire to believe in a supernatural power, on the other it's unrelentingly mawkish.

Set in Depression it tells the story of inmates at a Louisiana prison waiting on  Death Row  or "The Green Mile" so called because of the green linoleum that tiles the floor. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is the head guard when a new inmate John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) is brought into his custody, convicted of the murder of two young girls. Gradually however, Paul comes to realize that Coffey has been wrongly convicted.

Hanks does a good job of selling his paternalistic role and Michael Clark Duncan as John Coffey is a remarkable find, although some may see more than a tad of racial stereotyping in his character. These two are the linch-pin around which the other characters revolve.

Whilst conventionally-realised (as was Darabont's previous and first feature, another prison drama also taken from a Stephen King novel, the hugely successful The Shawshank Redemption), and overlong (the mouse business is way overdone) and the bookends in which a centenarian Paul recounts his story is rather incongruent with the rest of the film, much as with the Depression era films of Frank Capra in their day, its Christological symbolism and sentimental indulgence will have their appeal for some.

 

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