Word: coffey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...convenience store, cow pastures and the dull, forever flatness of the prairie. You've heard of places described as cow towns? Coffeyville was actually labeled Cow Town on maps on account of the stockyards here. In the 1860s the name was changed to honor Colonel James A. Coffey, who set up a grand trading post on the frontier, selling stuff to Native Americans...
...feel bloated in the next. That's the case with The Green Mile, reverently taken from King's serialized novel. It's 1935, and we're on a Southern prison's death row, where the only recreation is watching a mouse commandeer the corridor. Enter a new inmate, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a giant black man with a gift of preternatural empathy; he can literally suck the pain out of people. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), the chief guard of E Block, is in awe of this white magic. He benefits from it, uses it to help a friend...
...daringly lunatic, dark-star quality by Sam Rockwell), whose crimes are even worse than we feared. At the core, though, one finds a slacky, sappy film. The human mystery that breathed so easily in Shawshank is often forced here. Grandstanding reaction shots of teary guards cue us to John Coffey's miraculous power as surely as the big man's initials hint at his majesty...
...Ultimately, Edgecomb must make a difficult choice in deciding between duty and right. To follow through with the execution of John Coffey would be to kill an innocent man - yet there is nothing that he can legally do to prevent it. Edgecomb himself expresses fear of damnation, for how could God forgive him for killing one of his messengers? Needless to say, Edgecomb's emotional turmoil is palpable, and his final decision forever impacts his life...
...Green Mile is a place of redemption, where guilty men receive a final opportunity to repent. It is here that John Coffey transcends the black and white of this world, elevating the struggle between good and evil to a spiritual plane. During the climactic scene in which Edgecomb takes Coffey's hand through the bars of his cell, Coffey rewards Edgecomb's faith in him by letting him see the evil that he sees. With sparks flying in the background, Edgecomb glimpses Coffey's insight, and realizes the truth...