The Green Mile

On death row at a Louisiana prison nicknamed the Green Mile guard Paul Edgecomb oversees the arrival of John Coffey — an enormous gentle Black man convicted of murdering two young girls who turns out to possess miraculous healing abilities. Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s serialized novel is a long and deeply affecting meditation on justice mercy and the specific cruelty of systems that destroy what they cannot understand. Michael Clarke Duncan’s John Coffey is one of cinema’s most unjustly overlooked performances.