The Green Mile was Frank Darabont’s (
The Mist, The Majestic) first movie following
The Shawshank Redemption, a riveting prison movie that has found a permanent spot on many critics and movie fan’s top ten of all-time lists. The expectations were high for
The Green Mile, if not altogether unrealistic. Like
The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set almost exclusively in prison. Like
The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was based on a Stephen King novel. Like
The Shawshank Redemption, this movie was set somewhere in middle America, reasonably close to the time frame of World War I, though neither of these movies ever really talks about any war.
The Green Mile was set in 1932, while
The Shawshank Redemption was set in 1946. The expectations for
The Green Mile might have been unrealistic. I say this because of the reasons mentioned above, but also because it starred Tom Hanks (
Forrest Gump, Philadelphia), Hollywood’s #1 leading man at the time, who was fresh off of receiving his 5th Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor after his performance in
Saving Private Ryan. While
The Green Mile is not as good as
The Shawshank Redemption (my favorite film of all time, at the time of this review), it is still an incredible movie that everybody should see at least once.
Continue reading The Green Mile (1999) →