Green Mile

             The Green Mile is based on a 5 part series of the same name from author Stephen King. This is the second collaboration between Darabont and King, the first being the highly popular The Shawshank Redemption (1994). The Green Mile was nominated for 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Clarke Duncan), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound, but like the Shawshank Redemption before it, it failed to pick up anything.
             The Green Mile is an epic, running over three hours, and a powerfully-told story that lays bare the triumphs and tragedies of the human condition. And though the film's intensity occasionally falls from its wandering narrative, The Green Mile remains riveting nonetheless, touching on themes of redemption and justice, while illustrating how, for evil to sustain itself, that it only requires good men to do nothing.
             The majority of the film's first hour is spent introducing the audience to the characters and to who and what they are. The film opens in a nursing home, with a man called Paul Edgecomb, telling his story of his days as head guard at Coal Mountain Louisiana State Penitentiary during the Depression. The young Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is a righteous man who treats the inmates with the utmost respect and dignity, and instills his sense of right-and-wrong into the men that work under him, including his best friend Brutus 'Brutal' Howell (David Morse), rookie Dean Stanton (Barry Pepper), and veteran Harry Terwilleger (Jeffrey DeMunn). Together, they are in charge of E-block (which is also referred to as 'the Green Mile' for its lime-colored floors), which houses the prison's death row inmates. We discover 4 new characters brought into the story who are a representation of good and evil: new guard Percy Whitmore, a sniveling, sadistic man who because of his connections cannot be touched; the new prisoner John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), an imposing giant of a man, who we discover has b...

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Green Mile. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 16:10, May 03, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/22115.html