After violent criminals kidnap the wife of
a tough prison warden and demand the release of an inmate, but the warden strikes back with a hostage of his own!
Ostensibly a vignette from the life of jaded
prison warden Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) who bonds with mysterious, possibly magical prisoner John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), the film's ugly combination of brutal
prison realism and high sentimentality is a
tough pill to swallow, even despite the best efforts of Thomas Newman's magnificent score.