The Green Mile is about many things, but mostly it's about a man named John Coffey - "like the drink, only not spelled the same." John (Duncan) is a hulk of a man who has just been brought into custody for the murder of two little girls. He was found holding their tiny dead bodies by a river, crying and slathered in their blood. Sentenced to die for the crime, John is brought to death row in a Louisiana prison. The floors and walls are covered in a lime green tile, thus the nickname christened upon the corridor - the "green mile". The person in charge of the mile is Paul Edgecomb (Hanks), a kind and fair man who has a problem of his own - he's got himself a doozy of a bladder infection. He and his fellow guards, Brutus (David Morse), Dean (Barry Pepper), Harry (Jeffrey DeMunn) and Percy (Doug Hutchison) watch over an ever-rotating round of convicts headed for old "Sparky". Their job is to feed them, care for them and when the time comes, kill them. Most of them try to make the job as humane as possible, but at last one finds perverse joy in other people's pain.
When Coffey is brought in, Paul can tell that something is different about him. He has a gentle kindness and child-like quality about him that no other prisoner has had before. He's even afraid of the dark. Paul starts to investigate the charges against Coffey in his spare time, to determine on his own whether or not his sentence is deserved. But if Coffey isn't guilty, then who is? The three-hour journey to answer that question will surprise and move you.
Source:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews/greenmile.html
