The Green Mile, starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan, is on TV tonight (Wednesday 15 October). Scheduled to air at 9pm on Film 4, the prison drama, which is adapted from Stephen King‘s 1996 novel, has been hailed as a “true masterpiece” and “film as art, at it’s very best” by fans.
Written and directed by Frank Darabont, the award-winning filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption (1994), the movie follows Paul Edgecomb (Hanks), a corrections officer working at Cold Mountain Penitentiary during the Great Depression.
When John Coffey (Duncan), a man convicted of raping and killing two girls, is sent to the prison, Paul begins witnessing a number of supernatural miracles, and suspects that John, who proves unfailingly kind, is actually innocent.
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Rounding out the cast, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, James Cromwell, Michael Jeter, Graham Greene, Doug Hutchison and Sam Rockwell also star.
Following its release in 1999, The Green Mile has received a Certified Fresh rating of 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as rave reviews from fans.
Posting on IMDb, one wrote: “The Green Mile is a masterwork. This is film as art, at it’s very best. The depth of the cast is extraordinary, with all of the players delivering excellent performances. There is a clear sense here that all involved in the production knew that this was something special, and gave it their all.”
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Echoing this sentiment, a second raved: “This movie is a true masterpiece. Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan were wonderful and the supporting cast was fantastic.”
“Is this one of the best ever adaptations from text to big screen ever made? I would argue so, twenty odd years on, and I am still captivated by the magic of The Green Mile,” mused a third.
Speaking with Forbes in 2022, Morse, who portrayed prison officer Brutus Howell, reflected on the film’s enduring legacy.
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“I saw it at the premiere, and I knew what the movie was,” he explained. “To this day, people are talking about The Green Mile in the same way they talked about it 23 years ago.
“It’s always with that emotion, it’s their favorite or one of their favorite movies, and it’s always said with real feeling. There are other things that I’ve done where I’ve had similar reactions but nothing on the scale that I get with The Green Mile.”
Stephen King is an incredibly prolific writer, and his stories have been turned into dozens of movies and TV shows – with varying results. (Don’t rush to see King’s self-directed Maximum Overdrive.) These are the best five, according to us. Your mileage may vary.
5. Carrie
Brian De Palma’s very ’70s take on King’s debut novel still has the power to shock and led the way on fake-out endings in horror. But DePalma’s signature voyeuristic approach makes for a queasy watch at times.
4. The Green Mile
The religious subtext running beneath this tale of a death-row warden and his charges is a little overpowering at times and the episodic nature of the story means it runs longer than it might, but it’s an undeniably emotional watch with a superb villain in Doug Hutchinson’s weaselly little sadist.
3. Misery
The one that made Kathy Bates a household name, it’s effectively a two-hander between her and James Caan. He plays an injured writer being ‘cared for’ deep in the wilds by his No.1 fan, who, it turns out, is bonkers.
2. The Shining
Not the top spot? Even though Kubrick’s film is probably the best film on the list when judged as pure cinema and one of the most influential movies of all time, it loses points on the adaptation front: King’s book is about the toll of addiction on a regular family. Kubrick was interested in something else.
1. The Shawshank Redemption
Famously a flop on release, the story of a meek accountant’s survival in a 1930s prison is something of a wish-fulfilment fantasy (the dude would be dead in a week) but builds to a genius ending that pulls the rug out from everything you’ve been watching.
The Green Mile will air tonight (15 October) at 9pm on Film4.
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Megan is a freelance news reporter for Digital Spy.Â
Editor, Digital Spy Chris has over 25 years’ experience as a writer and editor, having worked as a journalist covering TV and movies since the ’90s. Starting out as a TV listings editor at the Press Association, he was quickly hired by the nascent Heat magazine, where he rose to become Senior Editor, interviewing the likes of Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and Paris Hilton. Over the years he has written about entertainment with clarity and wit for Heat, Elle, Q, The Telegraph and of course Digital Spy, and has served many times as a judge in the Royal Television Society awards. He has written and recorded a novelty single with Lord Lloyd-Webber, written scripts for the National TV Awards, made Noel Edmonds cry, accidentally punched an Inbetweener and stolen a small piece of rubble from the Battle of Hogwarts movie set. (They can’t have it back.) LinkedIn
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