Word: darabont
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Frank Darabont, "doing time" means taking it. As the adapter and director of two Stephen King prison stories, Darabont is a man with a slow hand. He wants you to share the agony of ennui felt by jailbirds whose only job is marking time while scheming to escape or waiting to die--just like the rest of us. In The Shawshank Redemption he managed to invest this anxious leisure with tension and transcendence...
...there's no excuse for the movie to run, or meander, for more than three hours. Darabont must believe his film will move audiences, or he wouldn't have had the nerve to end it with the line "Oh, Lord, sometimes the green mile is so long." To more than a few viewers, this one will feel like a life sentence...
...Stylistically, the cinematography is very similar to what we saw in The Shawshank Redemption: tight close-ups, wide establishing shots, innovative camera angles. Darabont is a master of filming grand, sweeping epics in relatively confined spaces, and he stays true to form here. The pacing is deliberate, allowing the audience to fully experience all the tensions and hardships of life on Death Row. Still, Darabont is careful not to waste any screentime on dull moments; there's plenty of action to offset the unusually long running time. As the film progresses, the tone remains predominantly serious (befitting a story...
...only flaw preventing Darabont's triumphant second effort from being perfect is the manner in which the story begins and ends. Told as a flashback by an older Edgecomb sixty years after the fact, the story opens with scenes that take place in the present. This set-up at the beginning of the film is fine, but the ending just doesn't work. Immediately after the final scene from 1935, the story shifts back to the present for a wrap-up that comes across as contrived (the same problem plagued Saving Private Ryan). Instead of ending the film...
...only did lightning strike twice for Frank Darabont, it struck in almost exactly the same spot - a prison, conjured in the mind of Stephen King. Which naturally begs the familiar question: "How is he going to top this...