aul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer) takes mysterious walks from his retirement
home and gets upset while watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on
television. He tells fellow resident Elaine that it all goes back to
1935, the time he was head guard in the Cold Mountain
Penitentiary's Death Row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the color of its
linoleum.
Flash back to the summer Edgecomb (now played by Hanks) had to contend with
Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), a sadistic guard who happens to be the
governor's nephew. And it's the time that the Green Mile received a new
inmate: John Coffey (Duncan), a simple-minded but "monstrous big" black man
convicted of killing two little white girls. Edgecomb and his chief lieutenant Brutus "Brutal" Howell (Morse) sense that Coffey may not be what he seems.
Coffey's cell block mates include Del (Michael Jeter), a nutty Cajun who's developed an affection for a stray mouse; Arlen Bitterbuck (Graham Greene), a Native American convicted of murder; and, later, William "Wild Bill" Wharton, a cruel killer.
On the Green Mile, "Wild Bill" goes on a rampage, injuring Edgecomb.
When Coffey helps Edgecomb in a mysterious way, suggesting something miraculous, the warden is spurred to find out the truth behind Coffey's incarceration.
But despite Edgecomb's misgivings, he must carry out the grim business of
executions in "Old Sparky," the Green Mile's electric chair. All the while,
he must balance the needs and anxieties of his subordinate guards and
the inmates in his charge, while remaining true to himself. "The things that happen in this world," he tells his wife, Jan (Bonnie Hunt). "It's a wonder that God lets them happen."
Walk a mile to see it
The Green Mile is based on the six-part bestselling serial novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film was written and directed by Frank Darabont, who previously turned
King's prison story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" into the critically acclaimed
movie The Shawshank Redemption. The Green Mile is a handsome film that's variously funny,
hopeful, despairing, brutal, sentimental and cynical--an accomplishment for
Darabont and his outstanding troupe of actors.
The Green Mile is a throwback to movies in which emotions are
painted in broad strokes and the characters are unsubtle types of
good and evil, decency and depravity. But it's redeemed by its careful
observation of details, the skill with which it reveals its story, and the
open-ended morality of a tale in which prison guards are nice guys,
convicted murderers are saints, and miracles are real.
The film is tightly contained. Much of the action occurs in the titular
Green Mile, a stage-like space that gives the movie the feel of intimate
theater. But the film's also expansive. Great care goes into the
composition of each scene, so that the emotional effects accrue slowly but
lustrously, like the layers of a pearl.
When John Coffey first appears, for example, the audience glimpses only
a prison truck riding on its axles; then, as the huge man steps from the
rear, only feet in chains. The first time viewers see John's face, it's on an
upward pan. The effect heightens John's size and
physical presence.
But the true strength of the film, aside from its carefully crafted
script, is the bravura performances of the actors, led by
Hanks and Duncan. The easy camaraderie of the guards convinces the audience
that these men have worked together long enough to read each other's
thoughts with a glance. Hutchison (the mutant Eugene Tooms of The
X-Files) stands out as Percy, and Jeter as the mouse-loving Del.
Be warned: The movie takes its time to tell its story, and at three
hours, may tax the patience of all but the most devoted Stephen King fans. But The Green Mile is ultimately worth the time.
-- P.L.
n a darkened nightclub, Fox (Walken) puts together a master plan. His eye is on a dangerously seductive call girl named Sandii (Argento). He points her out to his partner, X (Dafoe), who takes her home for the night. The next morning the couple is visited in their hotel room by the cane-wielding Fox, who has a proposition for Sandii: seduce a man into leaving his wife and his life as it is for her, and in return Sandii will be paid a million dollars. Given all of two seconds to decide, Sandii accepts and Fox's plan moves into action.
The man in question is a revolutionarily brilliant Japanese geneticist by the name of Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano), and the name of the game is corporate espionage. Hiroshi works for the very big, very powerful German mega-corporation Maas, and an even bigger and more powerful Japanese mega-corporation, Hosaka, wants Hiroshi--badly.
Fox, X, and Sandii spend the next year running surveillance on Hiroshi and preparing Sandii to take on the fictitious identity she'll use to woo Hiroshi away from his German upper-class wife and into the open arms of Sandii and Hosaka.
As the time of Hiroshi's "defection" approaches, the stakes get higher. Fox asks his shadowy employers for double his original eight-figure fee. X and Sandii seem to be falling for each other, much to the dismay of Fox, who tells X he's not in love but in lust. Yet even as they grow closer, Sandii becomes even more mysterious to X. The stories she tells of her past seem to be poked through with holes, complicated by contradictions. His mind clouded by adoration, X ignores this, just as he ignores the mysterious diskette he finds in her purse.
The dark underbelly, indeed
Based on the short story of the same name by cyberpunk icon William Gibson, New Rose Hotel (originally released in 1998, now available on video and DVD) has all the elements necessary for a slick, sultry, science fiction noir thriller. Under the direction of Abel Ferrara (The Addiction, Body Snatchers), however, the film squanders nearly every ounce of its potential, ending up instead as a confused mass of truly horrendous cinematic storytelling.
Walken makes a good effort as the fast-talking Fox, but ultimately this erratic character is as awkward as his exaggerated limp. His dialogue, as compared to Gibson's original razor-sharp, hard-boiled lines, is oftentimes flat and sometimes goofy. This problem is compounded by some rather unsuccessful improvisation.
Dafoe simply appears stunned and detached, both as an actor and as the lackluster X. And what sex appeal Argento's Sandii does have is lost in the film's many flat scenes. Even its numerous sex scenes, while quite graphic at times, are on the whole unexciting and unappealing.
New Rose Hotel does have the occasional shot, moment or scene that works rather well (such as the opening credits, which are actually quite cool), but for the most part the film is filled with nothing but frustratingly bad cinematography, editing and narrative development.
And aside from Fox casually mentioning Hiroshi's genius work with "hot proteins, high-speed links," an occasional glimpse of a (lame-looking) gadget, or some grainy "high-tech" surveillance footage, viewers can't even tell that this is science fiction. Any sense of the menacingly powerful but ultimately invisible influence of the mega-corporations so marvelously present in the story and in much of Gibson's work is all but gone in Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, as is the bewitching techno-fetishism
and the cyberpunk electricity Gibson so masterfully and poetically employs in his writing.
During one of their dull pillow talks, X intones to Sandii, "If you want to, we can just walk away from this." I wish everyone involved in making this movie had done just that.
-- M.M.
aul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer) takes mysterious walks from his retirement
home and gets upset while watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on
television. He tells fellow resident Elaine that it all goes back to
1935, the time he was head guard in the Cold Mountain
Penitentiary's Death Row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the color of its
linoleum.
n a darkened nightclub, Fox (Walken) puts together a master plan. His eye is on a dangerously seductive call girl named Sandii (Argento). He points her out to his partner, X (Dafoe), who takes her home for the night. The next morning the couple is visited in their hotel room by the cane-wielding Fox, who has a proposition for Sandii: seduce a man into leaving his wife and his life as it is for her, and in return Sandii will be paid a million dollars. Given all of two seconds to decide, Sandii accepts and Fox's plan moves into action.
