By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Movie credits and rating

The Green Mile takes place on Death Row in a Depression-era prison and features three graphic electric-chair executions.

This certainly doesn't sound like a movie for the holiday season. Yet The Green Mile is filled with so much magic and so many miracles that by the time it's over, you'll leave the theater walking on air and believing that anything is possible.

Perhaps the biggest miracle of all, however, is that despite its three-hour running time, The Green Mile has so many rich, fully developed characters and such intriguing situations that it never lags. It seems only two-thirds its length!

Director Frank Darabont is a genius in the way he has brought Stephen King's 1996 serialized novel to the screen with all its quirks and philosophical musings intact. Darabont previously did wonders on bringing King's other prison tale, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, to the screen as The Shawshank Redemption. That film got several Oscar nominations, although it never really found its audience until it was released on video.

The Green Mile, which has a lumbering giant of a miracle man at its center, is more King than Shawshank was. John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a soft-spoken man who is afraid of the dark, is on Death Row for raping and killing a pair of little girls. (Death Row at Cold Mountain Prison is named the Green Mile after the sickly color of the linoleum in the corridor that leads to the electric chair known as ''Old Sparky.''

But Coffey seems so gentle that he touches the heart of head guard Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), a fair man who is determined to make the last days for the men on his Death Row watch as easy as possible. He's progressive. He wants to be a calming influence.

Paul's fairness and compassion are mirrored in most of his staff, especially in his imposing subordinate Brutus ''Brutal'' Howell (David Morse) who, despite his nickname, is a sensitive man.

That can't be said for the newest and youngest and smallest member of the Death Row squad, Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), an unremitting sadist who taunts the prisoners, hoping to make their last days on Earth as horrible an experience as he can. At one point, he deliberately makes a prisoner's electrocution as painful and drawn out as possible, sending the witnesses fleeing in horror. Yet despite his tough mouth and hard-edged deeds, Percy is a coward. When he's disciplined for his meanness, he calls his aunt -- the governor's wife -- to intervene on his behalf.

Other major players include the newest prisoner, an unforgiving and probably criminally insane bad seed known as ''Wild Bill'' Wharton (Sam Rockwell); a gentle Cajun named Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter), a dundering half-wit called Toot-Toot (Harry Dean Stanton) and the kindly warden (James Cromwell) whose world is crumbling because his wife has an inoperable brain tumor.

No ordinary mouse

Into this stew of boiling emotions and misfits comes . . . a little mouse.

No ordinary mouse, Mr. Jingles is brave and clever and loves humans. Delacroix quickly becomes his best friend. Mr. Jingles runs from his outstretched arm to outstretched arm or plays fetch with an empty thread spool.

It's Mr. Jingles who is the catalyst for change on Death Row. He becomes the second chance for John Coffey to demonstrate his miraculous, laying-on-of-hands gift (the first involves Paul himself, who is suffering from a urinary tract problem). From here until its finish, The Green Mile moves onto a rarified, slightly giddy, otherworldly plane . . . not easy to accomplish when you're dealing with grisly electrocutions.

Darabont makes even those seem somehow not of this world. One of the executions is staged during a violent lightning storm which makes it seem Frankenstein-ish. Coffey's miracles, accompanied by shattering lightbulbs and bright lights, look positively divinely inspired and may make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. When he has performed his magic, something like ashes -- the leavings of evil? -- fly out of his mouth like swarming gnats. As Darabont weaves his spell, eventually something as simple as an old clip of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing Cheek to Cheek in Top Hat becomes eerily moving and full of portentous promises of things to come .

But all this takes time as Darabont slowly uncovers layers of his characters to see what makes them tick. It's an aged and troubled version of Paul, played by Dabbs Greer, who appears at the beginning and the end of the movie to remember the strange events on Death Row that still haunt him more than 60 years later.

But the payoff is gangbusters, especially when Coffey lets us and Paul see -- through a nightmare vision what really happened to those little girls whom he is accused of murdering.

Heart on his sleeve

Darabont couldn't have found a better man to demonstrate compassion and understanding than Hanks, an actor who easily wears his heart on his sleeve. We can see his strong feelings for the prisoners and his growing bond with Coffey, a man he comes to realize is innocent but, sadly, cannot save. But Coffey doesn't want to be saved, hoping for death to free him from the wonderful-awful gift he has of being able to see into men's hearts.

As Coffey, Duncan cuts a childlike figure of great grace and feeling. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Coffey's powers are demonstrated and Duncan, with his simplicity and reticence, turns what could have been merely silly into inspirational moments.

The rest of the cast is impressive: Hutchison as the man you grow to love to hate; Rockwell for his scary violence; Jeter for his open heart; Cromwell for his worried faithfulness; Patricia Clarkson for her realistic portrayal of a woman whose brain tumor has left her with many changeable moods. They bring remarkable realism to a strange fantasy.


***** out of five
The Green Mile

Starring : Tom Hanks, David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Clarke Duncan, James Cromwell, Michael Jeter, Graham Greene, Doug Hutchison, Sam Rockwell, Patricia Clarkson, Harry Dean Stanton, Dabbs Greer, Eve Brent.

Producers: A Warner Bros. release of a Castle Rock production written and directed by Frank Darabont, from the novel by Stephen King.

Rated : R, contains violence, profanity, adult themes, nudity.

Running time: 3 hours, 7 minutes.