Herald rating: * * * *
Running time: 182 mins
Rental: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is a nice man who has a lot of hard days at the office. It's high summer; he's suffering a painful infection; he's got a staffer, Percy, with high connections and a bad attitude, and
then there's the job.
He's in charge of Death Row in a Louisiana jail in the Depression.
One day a new prisoner arrives. He's a gigantic black man, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), convicted of molesting and killing two white girls.
Coffey cannot read or write, seems what was then called "simple-minded," causes no trouble and seems to be a plain, good man.
Paul comes to doubt he could have killed the girls although he was found with their bodies in his huge arms, a bad place for a black man to be in Louisiana in the 30s.
Because this is a Stephen King story (as was writer-director Frank Darabont's last outing, that other wonderful prison movie The Shawshank Redemption), there is a supernatural and spiritual centre to The Green Mile which we won't give away here.
Hanks at his best: sympathetic, honest, calm and decent Everyman, Clarke Duncan simple and unaffected.
Be prepared for some grisly details of the death chamber; the depiction of some vile pieces of humanity in the cells and in state jobs; and take a couple of evenings to soak in three-hours-plus of this powerful tale, shortlisted for four Oscars including Best Picture.
