The Green Mile, a supernatural prison drama from 1999, is finding new life on the free streaming service Tubi. The Stephen King adaptation stars Tom Hanks in one of his genuinely underrated performances. The film currently sits at the third spot on Tubi’s Top 10 list of the service’s most-watched films.
Written and directed by Frank Darabont, The Green Mile follows a group of prison guards working at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, or as everyone calls it, “The Green Mile.” Led by Officer Paul Edgecomb (Hanks), the group receives John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a new inmate who has been sentenced to death for a horrible crime. Coffey doesn’t behave like a murderer and claims that he’s innocent. Edgecomb eventually realizes that the convict even possesses an extraordinary power to heal people. But we’ll leave it at that for those who still haven’t seen this classic, as we’d rather not spoil it for you.
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The Green Mile stars Hanks alongside David Morse, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sam Rockwell, Patricia Clarkson, Barry Pepper, Harry Dean Stanton, William Sadler and Gary Sinise, among others. The movie is one of two prison dramas adapted by Darabont from a Stephen King novel, the other one being the widely acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption.
The film was a huge success back in 1999, the year of The Matrix, The Sixth Sense and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. It made more than $286 million at the box office from a production budget of $60 million and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. When it comes to Stephen King adaptations, The Green Mile remains one of the best, with the author claiming at some point that Darabont’s script was the best film adaptation that he had ever read.
‘The Green Mile’ is a Superb But Curiously Polarizing Stephen King Adaptation
The Green Mile is undoubtedly one of King’s favorite adaptations of his work. But it’s not everyone’s favorite Stephen King film. The Green Mile is definitely more grounded in terms of the horror content that’s usually present in Stephen King’s work. However, the depiction of prison life conditions is pretty horrific. But what most people seem to have a hard time with is The Green Mile‘s running time. Clocking at three hours and nine minutes, it is probably the longest movie based on a Stephen King book, without counting the various TV miniseries and both parts of Andrés Muschietti’s IT.
The running time was heavily criticized, with some critics claiming that this affected the film’s pace. Famed critic Roger Ebert mentioned the film’s length in his review, but he felt that the world-building and characters justified the 189-minute mark.
“The movie is a shade over three hours long. I appreciated the extra time, which allows us to feel the passage of prison months and years. Stephen King, sometimes dismissed as merely a best-seller, has in his best novels some of the power of Dickens, who created worlds that enveloped us and populated them with colorful, peculiar, sharply seen characters.”
In any case, we’ll stick with King’s own judgment of the script and call it one of his best and most accurate adaptations. However, be aware that if you see the film on Tubi, the experience will be even longer, considering the platform requires you to watch ads without the possibility of skipping them. But trust us, The Green Mile is worth the patience.