The Green Mile
Two important figures in ''The Green Mile'' happen to be a giant (Michael Clarke Duncan) and a mouse. But when it comes to this extravagantly long death row drama, there are more important matters of proportion to consider. To watch a film this unhurried (three hours) is to choose a companion for a long ocean voyage. It's a risk, and you hope that neither ship nor speaker runs out of steam.
It happens that ''The Green Mile,'' written by Stephen King at great length and in multiple installments, does not truly warrant such a marathon. It boils down to a well-populated drama with a relatively simple story, one that could have been told with more economy and fewer talky bits of business around the cellblock. As adapted by Frank Darabont with as much exemplary skill as he brought to Mr. King's other prison tale, ''The Shawshank Redemption,'' it's a film with a counterproductive tendency to take its time.
But while a tighter film from Mr. Darabont clearly would have been better, ''The Green Mile'' proves surprisingly successful under the circumstances. First and foremost, it manages to linger on death row without claustrophobia and to become wholeheartedly immersed in what goes on there. Working casually, with the bookend flashback device borrowed from ''Saving Private Ryan,'' it eases into the story of what the very Southern-sounding Paul Edgecomb remembers about his years as a prison guard. Tom Hanks, who is so unaffectedly good that it has become redundant to say so, helps ease the film into its just-folks storytelling mode.
Edgecomb's bladder problems, which are the sort of thing on which Mr. Darabont might have spent less time, help set up the chatty back-and-forth of life on the Green Mile. (This place, where condemned men take their last walks, got its nickname from the color of its floor.) We meet Edgecomb's fellow guard Brutus Howell, called Brutal (David Morse, who shares Mr. Hanks' laid-back timing and sly delivery). Their colleague...
Please login to view the full essay...