Laundry
Burnham, Deborah S.
But, nota bene, his blessings flow only...
...man: someone who not only suffers the errors of the white man but suffers for the white man, redeeming his oppresDeborah S. Burnham sors with his taciturn beatitude...
...Now for the second theme...
...Only when a definitely innocent terrorists, but Bruce Willis movies are (Contrast this with Uncle Tom's Cabin in man goes to the chair do Paul and Bru- honestly amoral schlock...
...Stowe also used sentiment tal renounce their posts...
...She blessed the holy Coffy was accused, and that evil people stink of bleach for cleaning linen and her hands, stripping them just have to be stopped...
...cally attacking a proslavery tenet, that sibilities of good men...
...The Green Mile is of the guards...
...Percy then regurgitates whatever 2. Cleanliness and Godliness Coffy spewed into him but, remaining When the peasant girl, who did not know she'd one day be brain-benumbed, is confined to an asySaint Bertilla, joined the Antwerp convent, she was sent lum...
...the apple juice a mother pours out for her mismatched children...
...The figure first-class entertainer with The ShawThe closest this movie comes to rad- of John Coffy is, with or without his ini- shank Redemption, which I found simical criticism is in accenting the decency tials, an obvious effort to present a Christ- ple, strong, and good...
...As the Pope sang "Sancta," they fingered white liberal's fantasy of an ideal black their clean collars and smelled the furious prayer of bleach...
...But "Wild Bill" of blood and urine, the slow leaks of bodies giving up was a condemned man...
...El Commonweal 2 0 February 25, 2000...
...long enough to shoot "Wild Bill" to death...
...Would the irrefutability of guilt seem by the time of their executions...
...While the Kaiser's bombs made filthy work had to do all this because 'Wild Bill" was for everyone, she boiled the quarantined pajamas stripped the real perpetrator of the crime of which from fevered, suppurating children...
...Yet the film finally finds his crucifixion in the electric chair...
...Now, render capital punishment just...
...warden's wife while curing her of brain The thick proprietor, keys rattling like Saint Peter, cancer, Coffy then pours the evil forcedoles out tokens so our clothes can slam against scratched glass, field (or whatever the heck it is) into the streaming soap and bleach, whirling like uncleansed souls who hope mouth of Percy, who becomes a zombie their memories if not their sins will fade into an equal gray...
...That only misapplied made distasteful by the film's air of humanity of black slaves, thereby radi- capital punishment can shake the sen- sanctimony...
...Again, what is doned brutality in The Green Mile are and shock but didn't neglect to aver the the point of this...
...ity...
...electric chair have stopped him...
...Having but let themselves be folded, ready for our bodies' misery sucked all the negative force out of the and dirt once more, like generous innkeepers who never ask...
...This makes us ask our- like figure: Love, forgiveness, good coun- twisted and powerfully lousy...
...Note also that however nobly most of the guards behave most of the time, Darabont keeps contriving situations in haps achieve exoneration, but suppose flubs this point, too...
...sibility...
...To the vicious Percy and execrable "Wild Bill," this Christ figure does 1. The Laundromat, Sunday Morning not say, "Go, and sin no more...
...In fact selves why these good-hearted men sel, and miracles flow out of him and it's an artistic oxymoron: an anti-capitalshould be made accomplices in the ma- onto all good people near him before he punishment movie with a vigilante senchinery of death...
...Wouldn't the the ghost and flesh together...
...When she was made a Saint, In fact, John Coffy finally comes the crowd was filled with men and women she'd scrubbed across less as a Christ figure than as a in that contagious ward...
...By using Paul regards his death row as the "in- at a Bruce Willis movie, I'm perfectly only shock and sentiment to turn us tensive care unit of a hospital," and thus willing to clap and stomp my approval against the death sentence, Darabont is manages to maintain his poise and san- as our hero mows down thousands of avoiding any radical criticism of our laws...
...Nor are they portrayed as capable of redemption, Nothing here is new except the autumn light washing through since they're one-dimensional monsters...
...In fact, John Coffy becomes the instruNothing is really clean...
...fillment of their moral rectitude...
...sheets are stained gray with weariness ment of their earthly punishment...
...Frank Darabont proved himself a blacks are subhuman...
...John Coffy later tells Paul that he into the laundry...
...But, nota bene, his blessings flow only in the direction of those who are already Laundry virtuous...
...The fits of conwhich H.B...
...We don't note any which Paul and Brutal can slam the two capital punishment were reserved for real deterioration in the characters of villains around, and these batterings are people actually seen committing murder the guards as they kill guilty men, no staged not as the understandable lapsby hundreds of eyewitnesses and video matter how reformed these prisoners es of hard-pressed men but as the fulcameras...
Vol. 127 • February 2000 • No. 4
