Frank Darabont directs Tom Hanks, David Morse and Michael Clarke Duncan in this magical realist prison drama where a guard on death row begins to suspect a convicted child killer is not just innocent but a miraculous healer.

Stephen King was subtly moving away from pure horror throughout the Nineties. In 1998 he took his biggest gamble by publishing a Dickens-esque Depression era drama one novella length chapter a month over a full year. At the same time, Frank Darabont’s adaptation of King’s The Shawshank Redemption had shaken off its flop Oscar bait status to be considered an (almost) instant modern classic. To this day it remains many people’s favourite film. Darabont’s return to that well with The Green Mile is a classy, prestigious affair. Hanks was a firmly established A-List megastar by this juncture, any project he put his name to felt exciting. The movie hits many of the same sentimental but harshly tough notes as its forerunner. Expectations were higher and the messaging is far more sentimental, obviously manipulative and repetitive. Where The Shawshank Redemption races through decades at a clip only comparable to Goodfellas, The Green Mile stays still in one spot rubbing its uncamouflaged pseudo Christ allegories in your face whether you bite or not. If you are a non believer the last hour is a slog. I appreciated it more on this belated revisit, wrapped up in the duvet on the sofa one winter morning with the cat napping at my feet. But it isn’t a patch on the humanist Shawshank, just very blatantly cut from the same cloth. At least Sam Rockwell turns up in the middle hour to inject the affair with a bit of zany nasty.

6

Perfect Double Bill: 3 hours and 9 minutes set mainly in the same jail house corridor. I’m full!