'The Green Mile' tops week's video releases

On DVD: 'Out of Africa Collector's Edition'

June 13, 2000
Web posted at: 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT)

By Scott Hettrick

'The Green Mile'

(Warner, VHS priced for rental, DVD $24.98, rated R)
1999.
Directed by Frank Darabont; starring Tom Hanks, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Clarke Duncan, James Cromwell, Michael Jeter, Graham Greene and Gary Sinise.

"The Green Mile" looks and feels like a big, important movie, one that should carry a lot of lasting dramatic weight and impact.

And it does indeed start out that way; however, it doesn't go the extra mile needed to be that kind of movie.

In fact, it spins off in an unexpected direction that takes it into another realm entirely, a more Stephen King-like realm. Which is natural since it is based on a novel by King.

But unlike another King story also directed by Frank Darabont, "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile" adds an element of the fantastic to the dramatic story line that will work for some viewers and may not fly with others.

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Even among those who can wrap their emotions around this "Twilight Zone"-ish story element, the movie that starts out as a heavy drama about the rigid and sterile life of prison guards in a 1930s Southern death row block will at the very least put one in a decidedly different mind-set. This is not necessarily a negative, but it certainly requires an emotional adjustment about midway through the three-hour movie.

Tom Hanks is typically brilliant, this time as the primary guard who has an embarrassing physical ailment that is cramping his sex life and causing him excruciating discomfort when he urinates. He also is dealing with a dangerously spoiled brat who has become a guard through family connections and is threatening to spark a major problem with the prisoners due to his callously tormenting behavior. Oh, and Hank's guard character also is aware that his boss' wife is suffering from a rapidly progressing form of brain cancer.

Enter a stereotypical behemoth black man (Michael Clarke Duncan) straight out of the post-Civil War-era South who is as gentle, childlike and misunderstood as he is big. The guard soon develops a close bond with the giant prisoner that positively impacts all the issues previously laid out in the guard's life.

"The Green Mile" is extremely slowly paced, perhaps too slowly. But while that is a problem that can be tolerated, the main problem is that the fantastic element of the movie is introduced without any rhyme or reason and is never justified in any subsequent developments. Consequently, the device is not well suited to the framework of this heavy drama, which ultimately cannot sustain it.

DVD tips

Among recent DVD releases are classic films and more modern movies with notable supplemental material:

The Charlie Chaplin films: "Modern Times," "The Gold Rush," "City Lights," "Monsieur Verdoux," "The Circus"; a single DVD with "The Kid" and "A Dog's Life"; and another DVD with six Chaplin shorts, "A First National Collection" (Image Entertainment, $29.99 each), deliver terrific video transfers of the legendary star's most memorable and popular silent films, each with extra features such as interviews with various people connected to Chaplin and his movies.

Four Humphrey Bogart classics: "The Big Sleep," "Casablanca," "Key Largo" and "The Maltese Falcon" (Warner, $24.98 each) provide terrific reproductions of several of Bogart's finest works in black and white, plus documentaries about the films and on "The Big Sleep," a second previously unreleased test version of the movie.

"Being John Malkovich Special Edition" (USA, $24.95) offers a couple of short extra interviews with director Spike Jonze and an unnoticed actor "extra" that are as bizarre as the movie itself, a page with nothing on it, the full movies-within-the-movie about Malkovich's career transition from an actor to a puppeteer, and the faux archive documentary about the history of the creation of the 7 and 1/2 floor.

"Little Women Special Edition" (Columbia TriStar, $27.95) presents a making-of featurette, an audio commentary by director Gillian Armstrong, and a couple of short deleted scenes, including a strange one in which Armstrong wanted to have the camera take the point of view of the family cat jumping off the bed.

"Pretty Woman Special 10th Anniversary Edition" (Buena Vista, $29.99) is a slightly altered director's cut of the film that runs six minutes longer, plus an audio commentary by director Garry Marshall, a production featurette, the "Wild Women" music video and some behind-the-scenes footage.

"Out of Africa Collector's Edition" (Universal, $29.99) includes a long and somewhat insightful original documentary called "Song of Africa," about the making of the movie, and an audio commentary by director Sydney Pollack that is entertainingly informative.

(c) 2000, Scott Hettrick. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

"The Green Mile" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company Castle Rock Entertainment, a Time Warner property.

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Official 'The Green Mile' site
Castle Rock Entertainment

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