By most people’s standards, I am quite a little movie buff and will generally watch anything and everything when it comes to the movie world. My favorite genres are most definitely the 'Horror/Sci fi' and 'Action' films and the 'Drama' section is my least favorite, I do prefer films that go crash, bang, wallop to something you have to sit and listen to. It may come as a surprise then, that I am about to give such high acclaim to a drama movie. The Green Mile staring Tom Hanks is an exception to my fast paced standards, the movie has just about everything in the mix to suit almost everybody's tastes. There is a brilliant combination of laughs, shocks, suspense and drama and it is simply one of those films that you dare not stop watching.
~~~~~~THE STORY~~~~~~
The Green Mile is set inside an Alabama death row prison ward in the 1930’s, the head guard is Paul Edgecomb (Hanks) who works rotating shifts with his best friend Brutus (David Morse), and three other guards, Dean Stanton (Barry Pepper) Harry Terwilliger (Jeffrey De Munn) and the state governor’s nephew Percy Witmore (Doug Hutchison). Brutus is a huge man but he is also extremely fair towards the death row inmates and simply gets on with his daily rounds, as do the rest of the guards, with the exception that is, of Percy Witmore.
Percy Witmore is a twisted little man whose only intention is to use his job, to hurt the inmates and cause as much trouble on the ward as possible. His greatest wish is to see, up close and personal, one of the inmate’s die in the electric chair. None of the other guards want Percy around but because his uncle is the governor, there isn’t much they can do but tolerate his wicked ways.
On the death row waiting list are just two prisoners to start with, a Red Indian convicted murderer who is repentant for his crime called Arlen Bitterback (Graham Greene) and a small French guy called Eduard Delacroix – Del for short (Michael Jeter). At the time of this story, Paul Edgecomb is suffering the worst bladder infection of his entire life, his exact description of this, is that it feels like he is p*ssing razor blades, this will come into the story a little later.
All is as normal as can be until the ward receives a new inmate, a huge 8-ft tall man mountain called John Coffey. This large
black but apparently backward and gentle man has been convicted of raping and murdering two small girls. Straight from the off, the guards know that there is something not quite normal about John Coffey, he is timid, respectful and scared to sleep with the lights out, a little odd for someone so apparently brutal.
The first of the inmates to be executed is Arlen Bitterback, as he is strapped into the electric chair there are several procedures that must be followed in order to make the execution as humane as possible. One of these procedures is that a wet sponge must be placed on the prisoner’s head underneath the electric cap, this again will come into the fold a little later. All prisoners to be executed must take the long walk to the chair known as ‘The mile’ but in this case, as the floor is lime green in colour, it is affectionately known as ‘The Green Mile’.
After the execution of Bitterback the guards are surprised by the intrusion of a small but extremely brave fieldmouse, one of the prisoners 'Del’ takes a special interest in the small rodent and asks if he can keep it as a cell mate. Thinking about keeping the peace, all of the guards are happy with this, with the exception of Percy Witmore who simply wants to kill it. After a short while, Del discovers that the mouse is no ordinary mouse, but a clever little so and so that can do numerous amounts of tricks. This annoys Percy even more as he thinks that all the prisoners should not be allowed to have any comforts whatsoever. Soon after, the cell block take in another death row inmate nicknamed ‘Wild Bill’ (Sam Rockwell). Wild Bill is an absolute nutcase and after tricking the guards into thinking he was in a drug induced coma, he bursts into life and begins fighting with them. During this scuffle Edgecomb is kicked in the groin and coupled with his water infection, he hits the floor instantly. Percy shows his true colours as he stands shivering in a corner and it is left upto big Brutus to enter the scene and with the help of a truncheon, he disables Wild Bill and restores order.
Edgecomb is helped to his feet in obvious pain but he tells the rest of his troop to go and see to their injuries while he looks after the mile.
When the other guards are out of sight, Paul collapses to the floor in agony, as he lay there, John Coffee asks if he can see him for a minute. Reluctantly, Paul climbs to his feet and goes upto John’s cell, this is where the story takes hold when John grabs Paul and pulls him closer to the cell gate. As Paul struggles to free himself, John places his huge hand over Paul’s groin and in an instant, the ward pulses with an overload of electricity and light beams ooze from John Coffey’s hand. He lets go and Paul falls to the floor, John then begins to cough violently and when he opens his mouth, a swarm of strange insect type creatures burst forth and then disappear into thin air.
Paul, quickly rushes into the toilet where he discovers that his raging infection has totally gone, what could this mean? John Coffey has some kind of wonderful powers within him but why would god give such an amazing gift to a psychotic murderer?
Without giving too much of the plot away, we are taken on a journey to discover if and why this amazing and seemingly gentle man, raped and brutally murdered two young girls. We will also get to see just how sick and twisted Percy Witmore really is involving Del, the electric chair, the wet sponge procedure and Mr. Jingles and there is a welcome twist at the end involving Percy and Wild Bill.
~~~~~~GOOD POINTS~~~~~~
The film starts off in a modern day old peoples home, where the aging Paul Edgecomb played by Dabbs Greer is telling one of his old lady friends his story on the green mile. As the film finishes, we return to the modern day Paul’s conversation and a little surprise involving Mr. Jingles.
I quite liked the idea of this little story wrap around as it did get you interested from the start and then polished off the film with a nice sentimental touch.
The performances from the entire cast are simply breathtaking, and especially Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey, who earned himself an Oscar nomination for his efforts.
Sam Rockwell really stood out for me though, he played the menacing and yet very funny ‘Wild Bill’ to near perfection and let’s not forget the little mouse who played Mr. Jingles, what a talent he was.
The story, based on the Steven King novel is totally fabulous, at one moment I found myself laughing and within seconds I was gripped, not many films can apply such a cocktail without making a mess. Frank Darabont who directed the magnificent ‘Shawshank Redemption’ adapted the screenplay from King’s book and then produced and directed the film himself, and if his last two films are anything to go by, then he is truly going to be one of the great Hollywood directors.
The special effects within the movie are very good and make the story believable. Also, the music in the film was quite fitting as well, Thomas Newman’s score was perfectly adapted to fit each section of the film and movie scores can often make or break a film. There are also some really good cameo appearances in the film by William Sadler, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Sinise.
~~~~~~BAD POINTS~~~~~~
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think there was anything about the film that I didn’t like, it is as near to perfection as you are likely to get, performances, direction and storyline are all impeccable so picking faults for me would be a little hard.
I suppose if I was pushed into picking out faults, I would say that maybe it was a little too long for some people to sit through, 181 minutes (3 hours) for a film is a little on the epic side. Apart from that though, there is simply nothing bad I can say about this film.
~~~~~~DVD EXTRAS~~~~~~
To be frank, this is where the DVD fails miserably, I bought The Green Mile on DVD rather than VHS because I really thought that there would be a plethora of extras, how wrong I was.
Apart from the usual scene selection features and the theatrical trailer, we are given a fairly short documentary about the making of the film called ‘Walking the mile’ which I found interesting if not a little on the short side.
This apart, there is nothing else on there and to be honest, with the DVD costing twice as much as the VHS format, I felt more than a little ripped off.
The Green Mile is available from almost any DVD and VHS retailer, HVM, Virgin, WHSmith and Amazon all have stocks to spare. I paid £15.99 for my copy from Britannia DVD club, although strangely enough, I have found that the DVD is only £7.99 on Amazon which is £6 cheaper than what they are quoting for the VHS video. You can buy a special VHS triple pack of Tom Hanks films including ‘The Green Mile, Cast Away and Philadelphia’ for £15.99 at HMV and Virgin, so it would make sense if you like Tom Hanks to purchase that one instead.
~~~~~~MY FINAL THOUGHTS~~~~~~
As I have made clear, The Green Mile is an absolutely fantastic movie, you would have to go a long way to find a great piece of entertainment to match this. I would gladly give the film itself 5 stars but because the DVD is so empty and disappointing I can only give it 4.
Like I said, I paid almost £16 for my copy but if you grab it from Amazon, then £8 is an absolute bargain. I am a great fan of Steven King but some of his books have been hashed up when turning them into movies in the past (The Tommyknockers, The Stand, Graveyard shift, Sleepwalkers) to name but a few, I assure you however, that The Green Mile is almost faultless.
For me, The Green Mile has a little bit of everything in there, there were scenes that made me giggle, scenes that had me gripped and scenes that were very emotional and almost brought a tear to my usually dry eyes. If you haven’t seen this yet, then I urge you to rush out and buy it, you won’t be disappointed, (well, unless you fork out £16 for it like I did). The film has an 18 certificate for use of bad language and some shocking scenes involving the electric chair. It is distributed by castle rock entertainment and Warner video, the web addresses are below.
~~~~~~CONTACTS~~~~~~
Here are a few web addresses that you may want to check out in regards to the film itself.
http://www.castle-rock.com
http://www.warnervideo.com
http://www.thegreenmile.com
And for purchasing purposes:
http://www.amazon.co.uk
http://www.whsmith.co.uk
http://www.virgin.co.uk/entertainment
http://www.hmv.co.uk
Thanks for the read.
DEANO!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, Andy Wilson - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Lisa Faulkner
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
Fantastic review. Well worth the E. It's a brilliant film, I have 2 say I was 12 when I first watched this with some mates and didn't truly grasp the cocept of it, but now I adore it. I cry my eyes out, it's not as good as Shawshank Redemption (whcih i love) but it's still a brilliant film. Gr8 review. Kirsty
bluetedgirl 04.02.2006 07:20
Wonderful review, well written and easy to read thanx!
oooh and great film, made me cry!
"The book was better" has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of ... more
films.The Green Mileis Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison dramaThe Shawshank Redemptionwas the first) and is a very faithful adaptation of Kin...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
"The book was better" has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of ... more
films.The Green Mileis Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison dramaThe Shawshank Redemptionwas the first) and is a very faithful adaptation of Kin...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is a slightly cynical veteran prison guard on death row in the ... more
1930's. Hi faith, and sanity, deteriorated by watching men live and die, Edgecomb is about to have a complete turn around in attitude. Enter John Coffey (Oscar nom...
![The Green Mile [DVD] [2000]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78527693.jpg "The Green Mile [DVD] [2000]")
Oct 30th, 2002
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