The Green Mile (1999)
The Green Mile is a 1999 fantasy movie directed by Frank Darabont, with a running time of 3h 9m. It stars Tom Hanks, David Morse and Bonnie Hunt.
On death row in a Depression-era Southern prison, head guard Paul Edgecomb has seen every kind of condemned man. Then John Coffey arrives, a giant convicted of a terrible crime who is terrified of the dark and carries a healing gift he barely understands. Directed by Frank Darabont from Stephen King's serialized novel, the film watches the men of E Block wrestle with what Coffey is and what the law requires of them. Tom Hanks anchors it; Michael Clarke Duncan gives Coffey a wounded tenderness. Long, patient, and openly sentimental about mercy and cruelty.
Quick answers
What is The Green Mile about?
On death row in a Depression-era Southern prison, head guard Paul Edgecomb has seen every kind of condemned man. Then John Coffey arrives, a giant convicted of a terrible crime who is terrified of the dark and carries a healing gift he barely understands. Directed by Frank Darabont from Stephen King's serialized novel, the film watches the men of E Block wrestle with what Coffey is and what the law requires of them. Tom Hanks anchors it; Michael Clarke Duncan gives Coffey a wounded tenderness. Long, patient, and openly sentimental about mercy and cruelty.
When was The Green Mile released?
The Green Mile was released on 10 December 1999.
How long is The Green Mile?
The Green Mile runs 3h 9m.
Who made The Green Mile?
The Green Mile was directed by Frank Darabont.
Where can I watch The Green Mile?
The Green Mile is available on AMC, DirecTV On Demand, Philo, Amazon, AppleTV and Fandango at Home.
Where to watch The Green Mile
Stream: AMC, DirecTV On Demand, Philo
Rent: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango at Home, Google Play, Spectrum On Demand
Buy: Fandango at Home, Google Play
Official site
Cast
- Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb
- David Morse as Brutus 'Brutal' Howell
- Bonnie Hunt as Jan Edgecomb
- Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey
- James Cromwell as Warden Hal Moores
- Michael Jeter as Eduard Delacroix
- Graham Greene as Arlen Bitterbuck
- Doug Hutchison as Percy Wetmore
- Sam Rockwell as 'Wild Bill' Wharton
- Barry Pepper as Dean Stanton
- Jeffrey DeMunn as Harry Terwilliger
- Patricia Clarkson as Melinda Moores
Reviews
One of those films I don't rewatch because I know what it does to me.
martin rated it 8/10
Similar movies
Explore The Green Mile guides
The Green Mile in our writing
- Where to Start: Stephen King, Where to Start?
- Companion guide: Magical Realism
- Companion guide: Prison Break & Escape
A few thoughts on The Green Mile
Stephen King wrote the source, so his fiction is the natural next stop. Wizard and Glass shows his epic, fable-telling side in the Dark Tower cycle, and Mr. Mercedes turns toward a colder, procedural dread. To sit with Coffey's story in King's own words, the serialized novel The Green Mile deepens every guard and prisoner the film can only sketch.
Prison dramas about the people death row can't fully break
Paul Edgecomb walks men to the chair every shift, the same grinding routine Cool Hand Luke's chain gang endures under pointless cruelty. Brubaker follows a warden posing as an inmate to expose the same institutional rot, both versions of Papillon send a wrongly convicted man up against a prison built to crush him, and Bronson turns one inmate's decades inside into a portrait of a system that never lets go.
Other Stephen King stories that take their time with dread
Frank Darabont adapted King twice, and The Shawshank Redemption shares The Green Mile's patient faith that decency can survive an unjust system. Mr. Mercedes keeps King's slow-building menace but trades the prison for a retired detective's obsession, Wizard and Glass slows down King's Dark Tower saga for a long, mournful flashback, and The Institute puts children with strange gifts inside a facility that wants to use them, not understand them.
Movies that make you question whether the condemned man is what he seems
Coffey's nature stays uncertain to everyone around him, the same doubt Primal Fear raises about a defendant whose innocence might be an act. Fabricated City traps an innocent man inside a system built to punish him, Sleepers follows boys abused in a reform school toward an adult reckoning, and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile studies a killer whose ordinary charm made people doubt what he was capable of.