REVIEWS

"THE GREEN MILE"

Michael Clarke Duncan musta been thrilled to get the role of "John Coffey." For the last several years, he's been seen in quite a few movies, so he HAS been getting work, but Michael Clarke Duncan is a huge (ENORMOUSLY huge) black guy, so the roles that he's offered are limited. He almost always plays a bouncer, or a guard of some kind. He even played a bouncer in the TV show, "Married... with Children." When he finally played something different in a major movie (he was the oil driller named "Bear" in "Armageddon") he was seen just a few short months later in the hilarious "A Night at the Roxbury" as, you guessed it, the bouncer of The Roxbury. I can only imagine how happy he was to get a co-starring role with Tom Hanks in a movie written and directed by Frank Darabont, the man whose previous film was the Oscar-nominated masterpiece, "The Shawshank Redemption." The thing is, it's a role that requires incredible emotion from beginning to end, true acting talent was required. Michael Clarke Duncan does not disappoint. He goes head-to-head with Tom Hanks, and proves that he's got incredible talent, enough to almost guarantee an Oscar nomination, one among the many that "The Green Mile" is sure to receive.

I remember when I first heard that Stephen King was gonna release "The Green Mile" in six installments. Being a comic book geek, I thought that was kinda cool. I spent the three bucks (which is about the price of a high-quality comic book nowadays) every month on a small book for six months. Like I used to do with my comics, I decided not to read it until I got all of the installments. When I finally got all six, I kept putting it off. I eventually found out that a feature film version was in the works, and that it was being worked on by Frank Darabont (a man who has made only three films, all of which were based on stories by Stephen King.... "The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption," and prior to that, a short film called "The Woman in the Room," which was based on one of King's short stories). After hearing that, I knew I wouldn't read the books. I'd much rather know as little about the movie version going in, and then perhaps read the books afterwards. I'm glad I did that, because for me, this was a movie filled with wonderful scenes, one after the other, and a surprise was always around the corner.

Frank Darabont rounded up a great cast here. Tom Hanks is as great as he usually is, and I'm sure he'll get his annual Oscar nomination. Obviously, I liked the performance of Michael Clarke Duncan a lot, but there are also great performances by David Morse (he was Jodie Foster's father in "Contact"), Bonnie Hunt (she was Renee Zellweger's sister in "Jerry Maguire"), James Cromwell (ever since his Oscar nomination for "Babe," this great actor has been working nonstop), Doug Hutchison (he played "Tooms" in two popular episodes of "The X-Files" in which he was the featured villain), Patricia Clarkson (she played the wife of the main character during the first season of "Murder One"... the entire first season focused on a single murder trial, and it made for excellent television... the first season of that show should be released on DVD or something), and Barry Pepper (he was with Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan"... he was the sniper guy, "Private Jackson"). There's also what I assume was supposed to originally be a cameo appearance, but the actor is shown in the trailer. I won't say who he is though, just in case you don't know.

I can't say enough good things about "The Green Mile." The writing, the directing, and the acting are all brilliant. The movie IS a little too long though, and like "Saving Private Ryan," it has bookends that were too long and completely unnecessary. It clocks in at about three hours, but maybe it shoulda been about 20-30 minutes shorter.

Half of the people in the theater cried several times during the movie. I didn't because I'm a big, masculine, tough, kinda of guy (grrrr). Unless it's rigged, "The Green Mile" will get plenty of Oscar nominations, and it deserves to. This is a great work of art that I won't be forgetting about anytime soon. Have you ever seen the movie where Fred Astaire is dancing and he sings "I'm in Heaven"? I haven't either, but it's something that I'll have burned in my brain forever. See this movie and you'll know why.

Scale of 1-10: 9