The Green Mile

Impressions before seeing it
Hey, look at that, third movie in a row where the poster is a character's face! Anyway, The Green Mile was one of those movies I wanted to see simply because I haven't seen it and I know I should. Figured it would be good though, I don't recall hearing bad things about it.

How was it?
First off I'm glad Stephen King wrote another prison story without making it anything like The Shawshank Redemption. Not that there's anything wrong with Shawshank, it's a great movie, I just don't want to see it cloned. But setting it on death row makes everything completely different, and for that I was grateful.

One of the fun parts for me was seeing all of the familiar faces pop up, because I really didn't know who to expect in this movie other than Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan. But to my delight, nearly every character with lines was someone I recognized, and personally I have fun with that sort of thing. I thought the idea of a death row inmate with special powers was kind of cool, but that was really the least of what helped make the long running time a non-issue. Doug Hutchison, better known by me as Horace Goodspeed from Lost, actually gave quite a standout performance as Percy, one of the guards. His character was such a malicious little prick that one of the things keeping me watching was wanting to see him get his comeuppance. I found the inmates even more interesting because despite being on death row none of them really seemed like they deserved to be there except for Sam Rockwell's Wild Bill. Maybe that was part of a commentary on capital punishment, because I liked those guys and it was kind of sad to see them go one by one.

Recommendation
The Green Mile is one of those movies, much like The Shawshank Redemption, that is all-around solidly made and well acted, and that almost everybody likes. So I gotta recommend it based on that, but I did enjoy every minute of it.