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The
Green Mile (1999)
3
Hours long. Why? Just because James Cameron can make
an interesting and compelling 3 hour film doesn't mean
everyone else can. Frank Darabont comes close but ultimately
is defeated by his film's never-ending ending and Stephen
King's source material.
Why does anyone think King can write honest, realistic,
intriguing fiction? Okay, he occassionally succeeds.
But usually in the short form. Here, he has a 6 book
serial to draw from so the film, like, I assume, the
books, goes all over the place. The film finds every
nook and cranny and hidden corner of the story. It drags
every little emotive moment out with 20 minutes of exposition
to get there. Sometimes it works but overall, the film
seems elongated and laborious.
The film concerns a death row prison guard and his band
of co-workers and the inmates who come into their realm.
When a rather large and simple black man arrives to
exist in their midst, they are first weary of his presence.
But as (a long) time progresses, they learn to see him
for what he is, which is, basically, a walking, talking
miracle worker.
Darabont wrings out every single emotional and heartfelt
moment he can from the source. And, by God, the film,
when it gets to it's climax, is a fucking powerhouse.
It will make you crumble. It goes deep for the meaning
and emotion and hits exactly at the perfect spot. It's
a truly beautiful and angelic moment even if it takes
us two hours and 40 minutes to get there. What makes
it seem so weak is the final wrap- up, a 15 minute epilogue
that goes nowhere. Darabont gets to the end easily enough.
We don't really need an extraneous and somewhat tacked
on ending that simple reiterates the film's message
to no end rendering it almost null and void.
The acting in the film is superlative. Tom Hanks makes
every single Goddamn moment count. He works his ass
of for this film, like almost every film he is in, and
makes the whole thing continually come to life. It's
great. David Morse is equally great here. Morse's stoic
and more reflexive character plays great off of Hanks
emotive yet restrained leader. The two work great together,
just like Hanks and Tom Sizemore in "Saving Private
Ryan." (In many subtle ways, this film reminds us of
the prior Hank's vehicle, especially the running time,
the bookends of modern day juxtaposed against a body
of pre-50's American life flashback, a group of men
struggling against odds for a greater good...) Barry
Pepper (who was in "Saving Private Ryan") redeems himself
in the final reel here, after a rather lame performance,
with a teary-eyed presentation that lets him react in
our place on screen. Finally, at the film's end, he
is us. And Michael Jeter, almost unrecognizable as a
French Canadian inmate named Eduard Delacriox, acts
as quite an impetus for the explosion in the realm of
the imaginative that the film becomes. Jeter, always
spectacular, is more so here for his character's fine
flourishes that lack any hammy or overwrought moments.
Of course, the true giant of acting in the film is Michael
Clarke Duncan. Formerly used only for his immense stature
as a token "immovable force" in many films where he
played a bouncer, Duncan brings such a wonderful pathos
to his character, John Coffey, that we cannot help but
come under his spell. Even when the film flashes to
his supposed crime which lands him on death row, we
can see that Coffey is an obvious innocent. So, stuck
in King's sophomoric and over- used cliche of a "big,
dumb innocent," Duncan, with pure acting skill, makes
the character one of the most memorable and truly inspiring
of the decade. The scene between he and Patricia Clarkson,
using Darabont's poetic dialogue to it's fullest, is
one of the most wonderful and emotional moments to come
from Hollywood in I don't know how long. At times, Duncan
makes the film enter the realm of masterpiece. And,
of course, Hanks plays off of him like the acting genius
that he has become. There are just a lot of moments
where Hanks and Duncan and Morse simply carry the whole
large, cumbersome film on their shoulders and raise
it high into the cinematic heavens with their Herculean
efforts.
Of course, there is always someone right around the
corner to drag it down. Surely one of the most shallow,
unimaginative and irritating characters in the film,
if not in film history, is Doug Hutchison as Percy,
a truly uninspired and Kingian character of a sadist
if there ever was one. The whole use of Percy as the
villain is pathetic. It drags what could be a wonderful
film down into the depths of the unimaginable. Surely
King, the master of suspense and horror, could give
us a reason why Percy is so demented and sad. Darabont
doesn't. He seems to be there only because "evil exists."
And even more revolting is the homosexual/homophobic
slant placed upon Percy and the whole film when Sam
Rockwell comes into the plot as a wild and violent incarcerated
criminal. Often, their scenes together, continually
peppered with the use of the disenchanting word "faggot,"
will make your stomach turn. This is puerile, simplistic
and stupid scripting and I put all of the blame for
it on King and Darabont. It's inexcusable.
Darabont also falls into the trap of Kingian special
effects that just don't work. Duncan has several scenes
where black splotches, somewhat fly-like, gush out of
his open mouth. In this marvellous age of Industrial
Light and Magic, it still looks like a cheap, tacky,
unbelievable Hollywood effect. This coupled with the
use of lightbulbs as symbols of "life" and "enlightenment"
and "magic" is enough to turn anyone off.
"The
Green Mile" could be a fine film if all the Stephen
King trappings were removed from it, like straight jackets,
and insane asylums, and one-dimensional villains. And
instead it focused on the magic, the purity and the
joy of the story. There's enough here for a very solid
movie. Yes, I understand that the evil has to exist
for us to appreciate the goodness. What I want is better,
more believable, less typical ideas of evil. We live
in a modern age of cinematic marvels. To ask for a villain
worthy of the hero is not asking too much. The lack
of this makes "The Green Mile" a wasted masterpiece
and the work of all the actors involved is cheapened
by this one gigantic flaw. It's bigger than John Coffey
himself.
Notes:
Also
with Bonnie Hunt, James Cromwell, Graham Greene, Harry
Dean Stanton, William Sadler, Gary Sinese, and Dabbs
Greer.
Score by Thomas Newman.
Report
Card
Script:
B-
Acting: A-
Cinematography\Lighting: C
Special Effects\Make Up: D-
Music:
A
Final
Grade: B-
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