The Green Mile (film)
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Director(s) | Frank Darabont |
|---|---|
| Distributor | Warner Home Video |
| Honors | |
| “The book was better” has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of movies. Frank Darabont’s second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama (The Shawshank Redemption was the first) is a very faithful adaptation of King’s serial novel. In the middle of the Depression, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) runs death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Into this dreary world walks a mammoth prisoner, John Coffey (Michael Duncan) who, very slowly, reveals a special gift that will change the men working and dying (in the electric chair, masterfully and… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
“The book was better” has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of movies. Frank Darabont’s second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama (The Shawshank Redemption was the first) is a very faithful adaptation of King’s serial novel. In the middle of the Depression, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) runs death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Into this dreary world walks a mammoth prisoner, John Coffey (Michael Duncan) who, very slowly, reveals a special gift that will change the men working and dying (in the electric chair, masterfully and grippingly staged) on the mile . As with King’s book, Darabont takes plenty of time to show us Edgecomb’s world before delving into John Coffey’s mystery. With Darabont’s superior storytelling abilities, his touch for perfect casting, and a leisurely 188-minute running time, his movie brings to life nearly every character and scene from the novel. Darabont even improves the novel’s two endings, creating a more emotionally satisfying experience. The running time may try patience, but those who want a story, as opposed to quick-fix entertainment, will be rewarded by this finely tailored tale. —Doug Thomas
Barnes and Noble
Most of this adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling novel unfolds in the death house of a Southern prison—an unlikely setting for a story that’s not only uplifting but, at times, positively ethereal. Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s favorite Everyman, is ideally cast as Paul Edgecomb, the death row guard who discovers that condemned murderer John Coffey (massive Michael Clarke Duncan) can heal the sick with a simple laying on of his huge hands. Justifiably skeptical of Edgecomb’s claims, his fellow guards eventually become convinced that the gentle, wrongly convicted Coffey is blessed with divine power. Writer-director Frank Darabont, who also directed the film version of King’s other prison story, The Shawshank Redemption, takes ample time to flesh out his characters and build sympathy for the doomed prisoner whose menacing appearance masks an almost childlike innocence. As captivating as it is long, the Academy Award-nominated Green Mile takes viewers on an emotional journey that they won’t soon forget. Ed Hulse
Find this film
Related works
The Green Mile: Music from the Motion Picture
The greatest soundtrack composers have historically performed a musical tightrope act, being called upon to be stylistically inventive yet invitingly familiar, emotionally compelling without being cloying. In modern times, few have risen to the challenge like Thomas Newman. His score for Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s miraculous death row fable is an organic masterpiece, whether Newman is wringing dramatic fury from his orchestra’s rhythm and percussion or, as is more often the case here, delicately shading the proceedings with a palette of sounds…
The Green Mile: The Complete Serial Novel
Set in the 1930s at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary’s death-row facility, The Green Mile is the riveting and tragic story of John Coffey, a giant, preternaturally gentle inmate condemned to death for the rape and murder of twin nine-year-old girls. It is a story narrated years later by Paul Edgecomb, the ward superintendent compelled to help every prisoner spend his last days peacefully and every man walk the green mile to execution with his humanity intact.
Edgecomb has sent seventy-eight inmates to their date with “old sparky,” but he’s never…
