The Green Mile

 I've seen The Shawshank Redemption, which is a prison movie by the director, Frank Darabont, and I expected The Green Mile to be the same, but it wasn't. It was quite a bit heavier, as it dealt with people on death row who didn't get out in the end, well, at least not exactly. As you'd expect, it was very tragic, and there were a lot of religious metaphors. Throughout, I felt that the story lacked structure, and seemed like a bunch of events that didn't really connect enough. They all meant something for the message the story conveyed, but it could've been done a little bit better. Sometimes, a story without any structure is good, such as in Fury, which I complained had too much of a plot, but that was because I wanted to get an authentic experience of what life was like in the situation those characters were in, as their situation was shared by many people like them in their time, but in The Green Mile, this is a very specific situation, which should have had a very specific plot to go with it. Apart from that, it was a perfectly good film. Michael Clarke Duncan's portrayal of John Coffey (like the drink, just spelled different) was spectacular. He was the perfect gentle giant character, and I can understand why he won his only Academy Award for this role. I loved the symbolism and meaning with these people, how it perfectly portrayed the injustice even the best of people face in this world. I also especially like sad movies, so this really got to me. I don't want to see a total tragedy, I don't want to be depressed for a week after watching it, I just want to connect to the characters on screen, which is easy when you share their sorrow. I liked Transformers: The Movie, a little animated Transformers movie for kids from 1986 not just for it's amazing voice cast of Peter Cullen, Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy (R.I.P.) and a few others, but also because it killed of Optimus Prime, who everyone loved, including me. It made me feel all the hatred of Megatron that the heroes had. In the comic book mini-series Forever Evil, in which an evil warped version of the Justice League called the Crime Syndicate kills off just about every hero on earth. I saw so many of my favorite characters try so hard to save the day and just end up dying, so when the Crime Syndicate fell in the end, I was overwhelmed with joy. What I'm getting at here is that tragedy pulls the audience into the story and makes them feel all of the same emotions as the characters. I felt very connected to this story because I knew there was no chance John Coffey was going to survive. It's not even a spoiler. I love the emotion, symbolism and acting, though the story lacks any sort of developed plot, but it doesn't matter too much. A-