Re-view: The Green Mile (1999)

DIRECTOR: Frank Darabont
STARRING: Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, Bonnie Hunt, David Morse, Barry Pepper, Sam Rockwell, Dabbs Greer,Graham Greene, Jeffrey DeMunn, Gary Sinise and Harry Dean Stanton

PLOT: Reflecting on his life as a death row officer, Paul Edgecomb (Hanks) and his crew spend their time overseeing the inmates on "the green mile" until one day large apparent child killer John Coffey (Duncan) is placed under their care, and changes their lives forever.

The second directorial/writing effort from Frank Darabont is another prison drama based on a work by Stephen King, but those expected another triumph of the human spirit/friendship story will be left wanting. What Darabont instead has crafted in a visual poem, a fairytale based on one of the more epic works by the King of Maine.

The story begins with the brilliant Dabbs Greer (in his final role) crying at the film Top Hat. We then move all the way back 1935 and to the death row block of the younger Paul Edgecomb (Hanks) and his subordinates, Brutal (Morse), Stanton (Pepper), Harry (DeMunn) and the malicious Wetmore (Doug Hutchison). Their days are slow and the film takes it's time to introduce the characters, and the inmates Bitterbuck (Greene), Del (Michael Jeter) and later Coffey (Duncan) and Wild Bill (Rockwell)

The allstar cast is rounded off by Bonnie Hunt as Hanks' wife, James Cromwell as the Warden, Patricia Clarkson as his wife and Gary Sinise as Edgecomb's doctor. With this many actors there might be the chance that some would be overlooked and yet the film's epic run time, it's leisurely pace and it's growing supernatural intent never once lets you think someone is there for star power, and everyone gets their moment to perform.

For Hanks it's his James Stewart-like everyman that he does so well. The film is his, and yet being the actor's actor he is, he never attempt to overact when someone else gets their moment. While Hanks is the pulling power, it's Academy Award Nominated Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey that makes the film. His gentle giant performance is a career best, and his manner and way of speaking is nothing if not devastatingly likable.

As for the other actors, Hunt and Cromwell lead the pack acting with ease, and Sinise in just one scene of the film, delivers a monologue about putting a dog down for biting his daughter with the message at the heart: it only takes once, leaves chills down the spine.

Thomas Newman's score is as good as it ever is, after the hopeful score of The Shawshank Redemption this time him and Darabont craft a tale that has a score so haunting, and so melodic that certain scenes become too much to bear without shedding tears. If the supernatural element puts people off then their fools, since the film is about faith, compassion and love more than it is about creepy magical goings on.

It might not be to everyone's taste, and it is a film of character and mood instead of action and plot, but it's a beautiful film, cementing Darabont as a brilliant talent.