THE GREEN MILE: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1999) Warner Home Video

Set in 1930s prison culture, Frank Daramont’s The Green Mile (1999) is a rather cheap stab at revisiting the sustained melodramatic poignancy of The Shawshank Redemption (1994). The two pictures share an author - Stephen King; the book and film, essentially, a reworking of the crucifixion with the late Michael Clarke Duncan’s John Coffey as our Christ figure (spiritual guide, wrongfully accused of crimes he did not commit and sentenced to death by the state). The story of Coffey’s extraordinary faith healer is relayed by nursing home resident, Paul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer). In his youth, Edgecomb (played in flashbacks by the rather wooden Tom Hanks), was a prison guard in charge of death row inmates. Suffering from a bladder infection and kidney stones, Edgecomb is seemingly cured of his ailments when inmate, John Coffey (Duncan), a towering, muscle-bound giant, with the heart of a child, places his healing hands on Edgecomb’s person. Convicted of the rape and murder of two children, Coffey is seemingly the scourge of the prison, reviled by the other guards whose racial prejudices cloud their moral judgment and thus create an inability to see beyond the allegations and discover the truest merits of this condemned man. However, even before Coffey restores Paul’s health, the latter intuitively begins to believe in the former’s extraordinary compassion for humanity at large.

As time wears on, Edgecomb’s faith in Coffey – in addition to his being innocent – evolves into a terrible understanding; that he must put to death the contemporary embodiment of the messiah. A quiet understanding between Coffey and Edgecomb brews, but is only mildly meaningful. Edgecomb’s faith is put to the test when he smuggles his prisoner to the warden’s (James Cromwell) home where he restores the mental acuity of his wife, Melinda (Patricia Clarkson), suffering from Alzheimer’s. The picture is riddled with instances of divine retribution; as in the eventual punishment of the sadist guard, Percy (Doug Hutchinson) who, having deliberately inflicted mental torture on many of the prisoners is inflicted with Melinda’s mental disease by Coffey, and thereafter committed to an asylum. And although aspiring to some great and sobering tale of modern-age divinity, The Green Mile is more of a lengthy and leaden excursion than liberating. 

Darabont’s direction is solid, though slightly predictable and occasionally prone to fits of cliché that weaken the overall impact of the story. The execution of fearful inmate, Eduard Delecroix (Michael Jeter), as example, in which Percy deliberately forgets to wet the sponge during electrocution, is a sustained cinematic exercise in the macabre without any build up, designed merely for the sixty-second ‘shock’ that repulses with the breadth of its sheer brutality. The acting here is overwrought; Tom Hank's rather stoic guard, counterbalanced by Michael Clarke Duncan's chronically tear-eyed titan, who emotes in every scene as though it were to be his last. Duncan's career, cut short by a fatal heart attack at the age of 54, was better served elsewhere, although there is little to deny he came to the public's attention first in this movie. 

Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray faithfully represents the movie’s visuals. Colors are fully saturated, bold and vibrant. Contrast levels are nicely realized. Blacks are deep. Whites are pristine. Fine details are evident throughout. Alas, the 1080p elements appear to be derived from similarly flawed scans minted for the previously issued DVD, revealed by a persistent amount of edge enhancement. At varying intervals, the image is quite unstable. Vertical and horizontal lines shimmer, and there is also a minor amount of pixelization. The TruHD 5.1 Dolby Digital is fairly aggressive. Extras have all been ported over from the DVD and include a six-part documentary on the making of the film that provides thorough and comprehensive coverage, an audio commentary, additional scenes, and the film’s original theatrical trailer.  Bottom line: a mediocre transfer of a less than spectacular movie. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

3.5