...my favorite character is Mr. Jingles, a darling little mouse that befriends and entertains one of the prisoners. I told you this thing was sentimental.
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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 movie was nominated 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 rather frustrating.
The story is told in flashback by Paul Edgecomb (Hanks), a former head guard in charge of death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, a man looking 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. 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 little 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 are left questioning 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. "The Green Mile" defies credibility at nearly every turn. For instance, where does John Coffey come from? He appears out of nowhere, with no background, no record, no family, no connections, 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. 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?
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 much of Stephen King's writing, the three-hour story line goes on much too long; that the ending, which should have been poignant and stirring, is oddly flat and dull; that there is one anticlimax piled on another ad infinitum; 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 premiere storyteller, narrating.
Despite the clichés and stereotypes, however, the film's cast manages to lift it from the depths of the commonplace and make its watching worthwhile. Hanks, as usual, is solid and effective. He is our modern-day Jimmy Stewart, the unassuming Everyman we all wish we could be. Never mind that Hanks is beginning to play the same part over and over again, that Edgecomb is the same guy who saved Private Ryan. The formula is working for Hanks; he should play it for all it's worth. But he may be eating himself out of romantic leading roles if he doesn't trim down. Maybe he doesn't care anymore; maybe he feels he's outgrown them, in more ways than one. Michael Clarke Duncan plays John Coffey, and the fact that he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award is pretty much self explanatory. I just hope his unusual size doesn't interfere with his landing good future parts; he is a man to watch.
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