With the success of The Shawshank Redemption, it seemed that Frank Darabont couldn’t do any wrong. I can imagine the suits at Warner Bros. practically gave him a carte blanche to adapt another Stephen King story and have total control. It’s often a level of debate as to decide which of his first two King films are better. So let’s get cracking with what I think about The Green Mile.
1. The Guards at Cold Mountain
The way the film starts is kind of interesting. We see the immediate action take place as we witness John Coffey holding two dead girls and crying. Transition to a retirement home where we follow Paul. He feels isolated amongst his peers and tells his only friend what he did. We basically follow Paul when he was a guard at a penitentiary.
Him and his officers are completely different than those in Shawshank. They each have a sense of morality but the only one, named Percy is a conniving sack of feces. I hated that character so much, and I’m surprised the actor wasn’t nominated since he did some pretty messed up acts in the film. Within the context of the story, we see what the guards do and that is to mostly walk the inmates down towards execution.
Before I talk about that, I want to elaborate more on Paul’s character. Tom Hanks plays him well where he’s the defacto leader that doesn’t abuse his power at a moment. The moment when Percy loudly proclaims John Coffey’s arrival, perfectly shows what kind of man Paul is. He’s the guy and he’s lenient to an extent with the prisoners. A far cry to what was shown in the last movie. And I think in one way is that this film tries to at least portray that realistic angle to the officers at a death row penitentiary.
All the other guards do their job competently, with one of them being a sort of Saving Private Ryan reunion with Barry Pepper reuniting with Hanks once more. Percy on the other hand is the character that you love to hate. It’s established that his family is higher up on the political side, more so that when he messes up, he doesn’t face any accountability. He’s just a piece of work and the scene that solidifies it is when he intentionally kills the inmate’s pet.
Since we have a movie that involves death row, we do see the executions. Specifically, we see the electric chair that was used in that time. Nothing is half assed in the least bit since we do see a rehearsal and then execution of the guilty. With a movie that is grounded, it’s not exploitive when witnessing the action, but just gruesome since there’s a detail where the electricity alters in the room and seeing the corpse being fried.
The film is significantly longer than the last entry and I feel that it’s sort of worth it. We do get a sense of time progression as we see the next inmate being executed and another one being brought in. It uses time effectively than just a standard time jump by showing a change of a season. People complain about the time especially within the ending, since this is Paul’s story that he’s retelling. I think it’s more about getting closure and coming to terms that his predicament is a perceived punishment for what he had to do.
I’ll get into John Coffey next. That man should have won an Award. What I want to establish thematically speaking is this sense of morality that the movie has going for it. Shawshank, of course has redemption and has its subtextual reference to Jesus. With this film, there’s this idea of the guards being the ones to decide when the prisoners are executed. It affects the guards when they must rehearse it and of course the prisoners make light of it. There isn’t a sense where the ordeal sticks with them, but that it’s a job. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s not something that they deal with until later. All that changes when they meet John Coffey.
2. John Coffey
Michael Clarke Duncan was everywhere back in the 90s and 2000s. He was always the tough guy in the films and he has that very distinct baritone voice. And I can’t believe that it’s been a good while where he’s no longer with us. I remember his roles in Michael Bay’s Armageddon and in Daredevil with Ben Affleck. Among all his roles that he’s known for, I strongly believe this is his best performance in this film.
When we start the film, he’s the new inmate that is faced with execution. The thing that separates him among the other prisoners is that he has a child-like thing to him where he has a simple attitude. Of course, a retread where the prisoner is nothing like those around him but has an interesting aspect about him. This is where the supernatural part comes in, where John’s ability is to remove the ailments of other people.
It's never explained how Coffey got his gift, but he uses them to perform a miracle, sort of like Andy Dufresne as the Christ-like figure. With healing Paul and bringing back to life the inmates pet mouse practically gives him and Paul a rapport. The detail that I like is that we cut to John when an execution is happening, since he reacts to it and feels the pain that is being done.
To me, I’m perfectly okay with the direction that the story went with. People would be expecting this movie to be a sort of like Shawshank but at another angle. Having it be where the inmate is presumed innocent and having an unnatural gift makes it sort of tragic. There isn’t redemption, more so that it’s about the actions that the guards must live with as a sort of judgement. Which makes the execution of John so tragic.
3. Overall
While in some ways it’s inferior to The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile is still a worthy entry to the best films of 1999.
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