The Special Edition is worthwhile if for nothing else but the improved picture quality. But the additional bonus items are nice, too.
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Some years ago, Warner Bros. surprised me when, after "The Green Mile" did well at the box office, they accorded it a fairly compressed, single-disc transfer with rather ordinary picture quality and very few extras. Well, it's taken the studio a while, but now they've given it its proper due in a Two-Disc Special Edition. Maybe they were waiting for it to become a cult classic like "The Shawshank Redemption."
You'll remember that in 1994 director and screenwriter Frank Darabont made "The Shawshank Redemption," a prison picture with little advance publicity and a modest cast. After a slow start the film gathered momentum and went on to become a popular favorite. Obviously, Darabont hoped to duplicate this success with 1999's "The Green Mile," another prison yarn adapted from a story by Stephen King, this time opening to a great deal of hype and starring one of Hollywood's biggest names, Tom Hanks. The Academy nominated the movie for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Nevertheless, whether you take to the new film the way you may have taken to "Shawshank" is problematical. I loved the earlier film but found "The Green Mile" only mildly entertaining and in some ways a little frustrating.
The movie tells its story in flashback, as Paul Edgecomb (Hanks), a former head guard in charge of death row at Louisiana's Cold Mountain Penitentiary, looks back from the present to an exceptional year in 1935. The film's title refers to the color of the floor the prisoners walk to the electric chair. "The floor was the color of faded limes," says Paul. Edgecomb's fellow guards are basically a good, compassionate lot, except for one rotten egg, the obligatory sadist who delights in tormenting prisoners, getting away with it because he's the governor's nephew. When the movie opens, a new inmate arrives, a gigantic black man named John Coffey, convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. It doesn't take Edgecomb long to realize that Coffey is unusual in more than size: He can perform miracles, curing Edgecomb of a severe bladder infection that had been giving him grief for some time. After Coffey carries out several more wondrous feats, the guards question his guilt, the American justice system, the nature of God's ways, and themselves.
For any good fantasy to work, it must create its own believability through internal consistency. That is, it must fashion a universe, no matter how imaginative, that is convincing enough for viewers to suspend their disbelief without hesitation. Herein lies the problem: "The Green Mile" defies credibility at nearly every turn. For instance, where does John Coffey come from? He comes out of nowhere, with no background, no record, no family, no connections, apparently to kill two children. The film tries to justify his mysterious presence by saying that during the Depression numerous men wandered aimlessly about, but it's an ineffectual excuse. He is an enigmatic Christ figure? When Coffey arrives at the prison he is almost inarticulate, yet shortly thereafter he is conversing normally. Why, then, could he not have given a better account of himself at his trial? Would no one listen to him? Racism is barely an issue in the picture. Then, too, how has Coffey gone though a lifetime of existence without anyone noticing his extraordinary powers? Why has no one exploited his supernatural talents? And why does Coffey himself hate his gifts so much, to the point of dying for them? Is he supposed to be some kind of martyr? If the script had articulated the good vs. evil, innocence vs. guilt, or just plain religious implications more clearly, perhaps we wouldn't have to ask such questions.
No, "The Green Mile" is not the kind of film that bears up well under scrutiny. It's best just to accept it as it is and not think much about it. Otherwise, we would have to grumble that like so much of Stephen King's writing, the three-hour story line goes on too long, that there are things in the story line that are extraneous, that the ending, which should have been poignant and stirring, is oddly flat and dull, that there is one anticlimax piled on another, that most of the plot events are entirely predictable, and that the whole affair wallows in sentimentality. In any case, the film suffers most by not having "Shawshank's" Morgan Freeman, Hollywood's première storyteller, narrating it.
Despite the clichés and stereotypes, however, the film's cast manages to lift it from the depths of the commonplace and make its watching enjoyable. Hanks, as usual, is solid and effective. He is our modern-day Jimmy Stewart, the unassuming Everyman. Never mind that Hanks is beginning to play the same part too often, that Edgecomb is the same guy who saved Private Ryan. I suppose if the formula works for Hanks, he should exploit it for all it's worth.
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