The Green Mile
Director: Frank Darabont
Year Released: 1999
Rating: 1.5
Frank Darabont's much-anticipated follow-up to his masterpiece, The Shawshank Redemption, is a failure. It's based on the serials by Stephen King, and for some reason I think it works better in writing than on the screen. The fact that Darabont has to follow up Shawshank is problematic in itself, since that's not only one of the greatest films of all time, but also one of the most popular. We never find out what crimes two of the men executed in the film have done (the one is an American Indian, the other a Frenchman with a pet mouse) which, in turn, limits what we, the audience, think of them (Darabont obviously wants us to sympathize with them). Take your Christ metaphors elsewhere.
