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The Green Mile (1999) - Syrupy Collection of Great Character Actors

 


The Green Mile was a film that was in a regular rotation for my mom and stepdad when I was growing up, so I saw it many times in the late 90s and early 00s. My love of Stephen King mostly comes from my dad, who owned the first King book I ever read myself in late elementary school (Skeleton Crew) and numerous others I looked at on his shelf all the time and showed me miniseries like IT and The Stand. However, my mom contributed a little bit too with the likes of Creepshow and some of his other 80s adaptations and of course The Green Mile. So I figured why not revisit it since I own it?

My biggest problem with The Green Mile is one I share with its spiritual sibling in The Shawshank Redemption which is that it is just very sentimental and sometimes even downright corny. Movies seemingly designed to make middle aged dads get in touch with their emotions by layering that syrup on thick. There’s a place for that and I understand why people really enjoy it, but it just simply isn’t my preferred style which over the course of a quite long film that probably could have been told in a much shorter runtime kind of wears on me a bit. There are also a fair amount of contrivances in the film’s plot including one that is basically recycled from Shawshank with just a slight twist, and there’s some real pointless parts of the script that could have been excised easily. I know Stephen King loathes bullies and tend to write them all as inherently evil, but Percy is one of his most 2 dimensional bullies ever in how absolutely little nuance they afford him. Thomas Newman’s score is...very much a late 90s Thomas Newman score which coming from me is not exactly a compliment. Also, there’s a strong argument to be made about the magical black man tropes and how John Coffey fits into them, but I am not remotely qualified to make them myself.

There is stuff to like here for me though. The film is handsomely and warmly (especially for a prison setting) directed and shot, Frank Darabont and cinemtographer David Tattersall who’d become best known for working on all three Star Wars prequels build a very real environment out of limited locations and it consistently looks good. As somebody who dedicates so much of their life talking about character actors, this film can be a real treat, while Hanks is solid in the lead its the likes of David Morse (who gives my favorite performance in the film, Morse is such an underrated actor), Michael Clark Duncan, Harry Dean Stanton, James Cromell, Barry Pepper, a young Sam Rockwell and others who really drive the film for me and kept me happy and engaged the whole time. The story kind of meanders but in a way other that otherwise noting it was far too long that I mostly find charming in that it gives you these snapshots of life on the Mile to help endear the characters to you more and establishes various morals and ethics and personalities and it ultimately makes it feel less like a very structured, point by point story like Shawshank and thus less of an obviously artificial construct.

This rewatch pretty much confirmed what I remember about The Green Mile, and showcased why I only feel compelled to watch once every 5+ years even while owning it (as part of King adaptation box set) but also why I DO eventually come back to it. It is one of those movies perfect to occupy a rainy afternoon when you’re catching up on chores or browsing the internet, not very plot intensive to have to follow along closely and full of individual moments of solid filmmaking at any point you tune in on.

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