The Green Mile ***** (1999, Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse) – Classic Movie Review 277

Tom Hanks is ideally cast as Paul Edgecomb, the head guard supervising prisoners on Death Row at the Deep South Coal Mountain Correctional Facility in the 1930s. When John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a gentle giant of a man convicted of killing two little girls, arrives in the jail, things start to change as he appears to be able to perform miracles.

Highly moving and dramatic, writer-director Frank Darabont’s painstaking 1999 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel breathes life into its vivid, quirky characters and richly rewards patient audiences undaunted by its three-hour length.

Though, acting-wise, the film is largely Hanks’s triumph, Duncan gives a superb, dignified performance, and there’s a huge clutch of memorable support turns, especially from Sam Rockwell as the sneering prisoner Wild Bill and Doug Hutchison as the evil guard Percy. David Morse, Patricia Clarkson, Bonnie Hunt, Graham Greene, Barry Pepper, Harry Dean Stanton and James Cromwell (as the warden) are all essential to the acting mix.

There were four Oscar nominations, for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published and Best Sound, but no wins.

The Green Mile, by the way, is the colour of the lino on the prison floor walkway to the electric chair.

Darabont also directed another Stephen King prison-set movie, The Shawshank Redemption, in 1994.

Michael Clarke Duncan’s role in Armageddon (1998) led to his breakthrough performance in The Green Mile when his Armageddon co-star Bruce Willis called director Frank Darabont, suggesting Duncan for the part of convict John Coffey. He died on September 3 2012 from respiratory failure, aged 54.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 277

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