The Green Mile

Bob has a large collection of DVD movies. We both enjoy watching movies but for some reason we haven't seen one in a long time.

This weekend we sew a great movie "The Green Mile".

I selected this movie because Tom Hanks was the main actor.

The Green Mile is a 1999 movie. The film stars Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey.

The movie is primarily about Paul Edgecomb and his life as a prison guard on Death Row in the 1930's. The movie is told in flashback by elderly Paul Edgecomb in a nursing home and follows a string of supernatural and metaphysical events upon the arrival of tried and convicted murderer John Coffey.

His domain was called "The Green Mile" because 1) the linoleum floor was green and 2) condemned prisoners walking to their execution are said to be walking "the last mile".

The star of the cellblock was "Old Sparky," the electric chair, sitting peacefully, waiting for its next victim.

One day, a new inmate arrives. He is seven-foot-tall (about 2.1 metres) John Coffey, a black man (wrongly) convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. Coffey immediately shows himself to be a "gentle giant", keeping to himself and being moved to tears on occasion. Soon enough, Coffey reveals his extraordinary healing powers by healing Paul Edgecomb's urinary infection and bringing a mouse back from the dead. Later, he would heal the terminally ill wife of the warden.

At the same time, Percy Wetmore, a vicious, sadistic guard who takes pleasure in intimidating and injuring inmates, exasperates everyone else in the cellblock. However, he "knows people in high places" (supposedly he was the nephew of the governor), preventing Paul or anybody else from doing anything significant to curb his deviant behavior. What Percy wants is to be put "up front" for (i.e., in charge of) an execution; then, he promises, he will transfer himself to another government job and Paul will never hear from him again.

Notwithstanding Coffey's incredible abilities and the wrongness of his conviction, he ends up being executed, due in large part to geographically-based racial overtones (the movie was set in the American South, during a period of racial segregation). Edgecomb thereafter transfers from death row to another prison.

His "fate" for not stopping Coffey's execution was that he would outlive all his relatives and friends; as he puts it, he would have to walk his own "green mile."

The movie is 3-hours in length. Tears came to my eyes when Paul had a conversation with John Coffey before the execution. At the last moment of one's life, you can see a real person.

I will recommend this movie to anyone who likes movie.