X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Mistakes

When they tape Percy's mouth shut before putting him in the restraint room, the handkerchief is partly outside his mouth and gets stuck to the tape, when they let Percy out, the handkerchief has moved. If he's been locked in there with the straight jacket on, there is no way he could have moved it. See more...

Trivia

In the movie John Coffey has sort of a "messiah"-like role. His initials J.C might be a reference to Jesus Christ, as this is very fitting for his role. [This is a not-so-subtle attempt which places Paul Edgecomb in the role of Pontius Pilate] See more...

Mistake pictures

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

The Green Mile (1999) - 30 corrections

Directed by Frank Darabont, starring David Morse, James Cromwell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Tom Hanks (add more)

Genres: Crime, Drama, Fantasy

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
Corrections
Questions
Submit
During one scene, Hanks mentions a hospital intensive care unit, which did not exist in the 1930's. [Dr. Walter Dandy created the first ICU in the world - with 3 beds in Boston, in 1926. By the mid-1930s, this idea would have taken hold in the larger cities, such as where Hal took Melinda for her tests.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When the Indian inmate (first one executed) is in the electric chair, after they've hooked him up and before they begin the electrocution they show him up close with the black hood on breathing hard. You can see that he already has the markings and blood on his forehead from the electrocution before they even begin electrocuting him. [You are seeing shadows from the hood being pulled down. It makes absolutely no sense to use makeup during this scene when we don't see his body and the effects of the botched execution until the next scene.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When the guards are fighting to get control of "Wild Bill," Edgecomb gets kneed in the groin. If you watch closely, you'll see that Wild Bill's knee actually hits Edgecomb on his left thigh/buttocks area. [The whole point was that Wild Bill struck Paul in the area of his urinary tract infection, i.e., the bladder and that area. This is accomplished with the way Bill struck Paul in this scene.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When Paul Edgecomb is in the cell with new arrival John Coffey, there is a definite blue square behind Paul. Later when the camera angle is changed, it disappears and only the brick wall is there. [That "blue square" is a shelf - it's visible throughout the entire movie, depending upon the camera angle.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612 Time
When Percy is grabbed by John Coffey, he drops his nightstick during the struggle. You can plainly see the short thong on the handle as it hits the floor. When Percy turns to walk away however, the nightstick is dangling from his side. [No, there is a long strap hanging from Percy's waist and the nightstick is still laying on the floor outside Coffey's cell after Percy is tackled by the other guards.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
At around 2 hours and 5 minutes into the film, Hanks has just come back from the place where the man was executed without a wet sponge. He looks up and notices the light is smashed, and all the lights are out. He walks up to one cage, then over to John (the magical healing man), and you can see in this shot, all the lights are now back on and not one is smashed. [The broken light fixture cannot be seen from John's cell. It is further up "the mile" from any vantage point to which you refer.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When John Coffey is first brought into the jail cell, he shakes Paul Edgecomb's hand. Look closely at the size of Paul's hand. It is a child's hand, to make John's hand seem much larger. But when John is in the electric chair, Paul reaches out to shake John's hand and it is now the size of a normal adult male. [There is no "child's hand" - it's Tom Hanks' hand but he keeps his fingers tight together and his hand rounded a bit to demonstrate the contrast to John's huge hand. This is discussed in the commentary. The size difference between the two scenes is also symbolic of the evolution of Paul Edgecomb: in the beginning, all he could see was a giant "monster" and in the end, they were both just men, saying goodbye with a handshake.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When Coffey is first brought into the Green Mile and he and Edgecomb are having the "Am I going to have any trouble with you, big boy?" conversation, take a close look at Coffey's handcuffs. The cuffs are so huge he could easily slide both hands out. In fact, it almost looks like he is holding on to the handcuff chain to prevent them from falling off. [Coffey has already been shown to be a very quiet and obedient man. Even later in the movie, when he's technically proven to be innocent, he still chooses to be executed. If he makes a choice that big, actually holding onto his cuffs because they're too big also makes perfect sense.]
Edit
They needed to keep the mercy mission silent, so Percy was locked up and Wild Bill was drugged in his cell. So what became of the prisoner who was very rude to the warders about Mae West? He wasn't executed in the film and seems to have just vanished from his cell. Only two prisoners were executed. [Toot was Trustee, a minimum security lifer/prisoner who had privileges no other inmate had. He sold notions (i.e. the moonpie he sold to Wild Bill) and assisted with execution practice. He wasn't a resident of the Green Mile and there is no plot hole.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
When Percy is released from the straightjacket the cloth that is pulled out of his mouth is smooth and dry, not wet and wrinkled as it should be after an hour or so in his mouth. [Everything that they had to accomplish in that storyline, would have taken far longer than an hour. With a rag stuffed in his mouth for that long, and covered by tape to boot, Percy's mouth would have been bone dry, by the time Boss Edgecomb removed it. The hanky looked like silk, which was common for that era, and silk doesn't wrinkle. You can actually hear in Doug Hutchinson's voice, that the few minutes he actually had the rag in his mouth had already made his mouth dry.]
Edit Time
When the guards are drinking Royal Crown Cola on The Mile they put the bottles on the desk, when Tom Hanks goes to give William "Wild Bill" Wharton a drink, when it cuts back to Brutus, Dean and Harry the bottle labels have moved. None of the guards would have moved the bottles because they were focusing on Wild Bill to make sure he drank his drink. [There's no way to know that the continuity of that scene is disrupted, because the guards could have very easily taken a drink off camera, while still maintaining their focus on Wild Bill.]
Edit Time
When the guards are setting up to sneak John out, they go to the office Percy is in with the intent to lock him up. When Percy realizes what's about to happen to him, he tries to jump the desk to get away. Watch closely when he does. He has a book in his hands just before, and it disappears in the next immediate shot, leaving both hands free so he can jump the desk. It is implied that he threw the book, but you can see the book literally disappear with no time to throw it anywhere. [In the widescreen version you see Percy throw the book off the bottom right of the screen.]
Edit Corrected by Dale Topley
When Coffey takes Edgecomb's hand and makes him see what happened to the two little girls, Edgecomb sees the killer enter the enclosed porch and step over a doll and some blocks just inside the doorway. But earlier in the film, when the girls' father and brother go looking for them, there are no toys at all near the same porch door. (Note: The doll found by the girls' father is not the same one that was on the porch, so it cannot be argued that one of the girls took the doll and later dropped it). [So the killer moved them out of the way when he was taking the girls out...no mistake. He likely had to drag at least one of them along, so that would certainly account for the toys being moved.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
When Paul is talking to his lady friend about he and Mr Jingles being lonely and watching his friends die he forgets to mention, and she doesn't pick up on the fact, that there must be one more friend still alive: Paul's wife Melinda. [Why would she be alive? John did nothing to her. Perhaps the warden's wife is still alive, but she was so near death that her curing may not have had the side effect of increased longevity. Mr. Jingles would be an exception to that as he is so small; a little "cure" goes a long way, so to speak.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
During the scene of Eduard Delacroix's execution, there is a quartz clock shown. Although invented in the late 1920's, quartz clocks were not on the market until many, many years later. [The prison service, then and now, purchases many, many products which are "not on the market", through Government tendering processes.]
Edit
When John Coffey holds Edgecomb's hand to give him a 'view' of the evil of Wild Bill; we are shown a scene of the little girl's father shingling a roof. He is using galvanized roofing nails, something that wasn't yet in use in the nineteen thirties. [Galvanized nails have been in use for centuries. The earliest, crudest nails were made in the Roman Empire, and have been found in ships and excavations dating back to 500 AD. America has had galvanized nail factories since 1819.]
Edit
You'd think prison guards on Death Row would have known a little more about safe restraints, the way they bind and gag Percy would eventually kill him. They stuff a handkerchief all the way into his mouth, then tape his mouth closed. The gag reflex is going to suck the handkerchief into his windpipe and suffocate him in about three of four minutes. [Not everyone even has a gag reflex, and it is easy, though not comfortable to push the handkerchief forward into the mouth with the tongue. You can see Percy breathing through his nose, so he's not running out of air. The other guards had no intention of leaving him in the cell for a long time, only long enough to teach him a lesson.]
Edit
In the scene where Percy was placed in a straightjacket and locked into solitary confinement, the other guards tape his mouth shut with clear plastic tape. Such tape didn't exist in the 30's. [Scotch tape was invented in 1930 by Richard Drew, an employee of 3M, and transparent cellulose tape invented in 1935.]
Edit
When they are drugging Wild Bill, Wild Bill gets up off of his mattress on the floor to go to the bars of his cell. When the drugs kick in, he goes and lays down in his cell on a bed with a mattress on it. [Since he is sitting on the bed with the mattress after drinking the drugged soda, its logical to assume that he moved the mattress back onto the bed.]
Edit Corrected by AdmRose
When Detterick is shouting for his daughters, he calls them Karla and Cora. In the written report that Edgecomb is reading, however, the girls' names are Kathy and Cora. [Detterick's daughters names are Katie and Cora which is what he shouts when he is looking for them.]
Edit Corrected by julie sheridan

1 2 • Next page • Show all