10 Movie Deaths That Completely Ruined You
1. The Green Mile - John Coffey
The Green Mile is one special film. Slowly unfolding over the course of three hours, it’s a careful breakdown of one man’s life and consequent death, condemned to death row for a crime it turns out he never committed. It’s a beautiful challenge to preconceptions, to what life means, and to how we treat others. And it will break you apart like wet tissue paper in the process.
John Coffey has the gift of being able to ‘take the bad things back’. Seeing two young girls massacred in their home, he simply wants to help - but it’s too late. He’s found, convicted, and left to spend the rest of his days waiting his punishment. But his desire to help is never dimmed.
Coffey is goodness in its truest, purest form, holding a supernatural power that can cure brain tumours and resurrect the dying, but in a world as cruel and harsh as ours, he’s forced to suffer humanity’s worst actions. That he’s too scared of the dark to have the customary hood put on at his execution is as symbolic as it is truly, heartbreakingly sad.
If The Shawshank Redemption is the best film of our time, that this one was written and directed by the very same Frank Darabont and Stephen King should be enough to prove The Green Mile is up there at the very top.