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THE GREEN MILE Send This Review to a Friend
There have been films showing the horror of capital punishment, including the 1932 classic "The Last Mile," based on John Wexley's Broadway play. Sidney Lumet effectively showed the brutality of electrocution in "Daniel," based on E.L. Doctorow's novel "The Book of Daniel," which drew a fictional parallel to the still-controversial execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But mixing an execution-studded death row story with the shtick of Stephen King has resulted in a banal hodgepodge despite the high caliber of the acting. "The Green Mile," based on King's serial novel, is three hours long, and most of the time is spent in a Southern death house where we witness three people electrocuted, one burned to a crisp.
The gimmick here involves John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a towering African-American condemned man, convicted of killing two little girls and condemned to die. It turns out that he has special healing powers, evident when he grabs Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), the chief death house guard, by the crotch, squeezes and magically relieves him of his excruciatingly painful urinary infection. A rush of tiny particles flies from Coffey's mouth to symbolize the transfer and release. Not only does the pissing pain disappear but Edgecomb can now go home and service his temporarily deprived wife (Bonnie Hunt) like a young stud. If you can believe all this, you'll also have no trouble with the revival of a squashed mouse and the miraculous cancer cure that follow. This is no "The Shawshank Redemption," the superb prison film that writer-director-producer Frank Darabont previously made from a King work.
Not that there isn't all-around expertise in the making of "The Green Mile," which begins with Edgecomb as an old man in a retirement home. He breaks down and cries upon viewing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing in a television movie reprise, then begins to tell his story to a woman friend at the home. (We eventually learn why Astaire and Rogers bring tears.) Cut back to a young Edgecomb, now in the person of Tom Hanks as the prison honcho. Hanks looks more beefy than usual and acts convincingly as the humane guard who tries to soothe the inmates so they don't give anybody too much trouble when they die. He can also exert his authority with force when necessary and has to contend with a politically well-connected sadistic creep of a guard, meanly played by Doug Hutchinson, who delights in seeing the condemned men suffer.
James Cromwell portrays a decent warden, with key guards played by Jeffrey DeMunn and David Morse. The condemned men include Michael Jeter as pathetic Cajun convict Eduard Delacroix, Graham Greene as native American Arlen Bitterbuck and Sam Rockwell as the crazed and dangerous "Wild Bill" Wharton.
Despite the dignity with which Duncan portrays Coffey, there is a contemporary version of the kind of condescension that often was the case regarding African-American death row prisoners in bygone films. I recall comedian Godfrey Cambridge's satirical routine mocking the way there would usually be a black prisoner singing spirituals. In this case, Coffey is a mentally slow prisoner who meekly calls Edgecomb "Boss" and who is willing to die for a crime he doesn't remember committing. He's says he's tired and ready to go. Oh yeah? I thought that sort of subservience was long gone. And for his last wish he says--are you ready?--"I ain't never seen me a flick show."
Give the director and his production team, as well as the actors, credit for creating an atmosphere inside the cell block that is sinister and upsetting and often gripping. It really feels like one is there, and the cruelty of the executions is depicted unflinchingly. As I watched one man catch fire in the chair I thought of the current case the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider--whether the unreliable electric chair in Florida in which someone did catch fire constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment itself is cruel, and now unusual in the Western World and certainly relatively unusual in the random way it is applied in this country. "The Green Mile" demonstrates the horror, only to lose its potentially greater impact by being tied to all the mystical King gibberish about miracles and redemption. A Warner Bros. release.
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