The execution of black men in the American south: what an obvious subject for a sentimental slice of feelgood drama starring Tom Hanks! This is the substance of The Green Mile, adapted from Stephen King's novel and directed by Frank Darabont, who brought us The Shawshank Redemption. His subject need not evoke the unlovely realities associated with, say, Ricky Ray Rector, the mentally disabled black man whose 1992 execution in Arkansas was enthusiastically endorsed by Governor Bill Clinton. This is because the story takes place in the picturesque olden days of 1935: heritage death penalty.
Tom Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, possibly the most liberal death-row prison guard in the history of the universe, never mind the 30s. That bulbous, funny-shaped lower lip of his is permanently throbbing with sensitivity, though scruples about the death penalty itself play no part in his quivering humanity.
Our Tom gently presides over an ethnic rainbow of prisoners lining up for the electric chair: one white francophone, one Native American, one horrible white-trash hick, and one black man called John Coffey, who is physically enormous (naturally) a gentle giant (of course) and possessed of luminous Christ-like healing powers (oh, behave). Tom lets John Coffey put his hand on his nether regions to cure his urinary infection! And the saintly prison governor allows John unaccompanied into his wife's boudoir - did I mention this is set in 1935? - to cure her brain tumour!
If you can stand this three-hour-plus stretch of saccharine gibberish and patronising racial politics, you've got a stronger stomach than me.
