With another yarn-spinner by novelist Stephen King as its starting point, The Green Mile is the heart-rending tale of a Louisiana prison guard (played beautifully by Tom Hanks) and his death row inmates.

Set in the Deep South during the 1930s depression era, the film hardly strays from the gloomy Louisiana State penitentiary cell block where a quartet of death row prisoners live out their final days. Even the appearance of a cheeky mouse on the block is regarded as a big event.

Then John Coffey (played by Michael Clarke Duncan) arrives on the scene - a seven-foot tall black man convicted of the brutal rape and murder of two blonde nine-year-old girls. His gentle giant presence turns normal relations between the convicts and their guards upside down.

As Hanks’ character Paul Edgecomb becomes increasingly drawn into Coffey’s world within the cell’s claustrophobic walls, he becomes aware that this man who is afraid of the dark and boasts strange healing powers could not be guilty of murder.

But in spite of his knowledge and his growing involvement with Coffey, who calls his guards “Boss” without a hint of irony, Edgecomb is powerless to prevent the wheels of justice from turning. One after the other, his death row charges end up on the electric chair. You can almost feel the stifling heat pouring out of the prisoners’ pores as they wait to take their final walk down “the Green Mile,” the stretch of green linoleum flooring that takes convicts from their jail cells.

Hanks is brilliant as the understated prison guard with a big heart. His 22 stone co-star Duncan - who has played Bear opposite Bruce Willis in Armageddon - is also breathtaking in his portrayal of a man that is almost too good for this world. The role has deservedly earned Duncan an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

For an actor used to playing the tough guy, the part of Coffey was a dream come true for the actor whose arms are thicker than most people’s thighs.

“I had never taken on a role like this,” he says. “I started reading the novel and couldn’t put it down. I got emotional while reading it. Once I finished it, I said, ‘That’s me. I don’t care what I have to do, but I’ve got to play this role.’”

There are strong performances too from poker-faced James Cromwell, whose role as prison governor is more sympathetic than his previous performances as the corrupt police captain in L.A. Confidential and the mean general in The General’s Daughter.

A wonderfully-wizened Harry Dean Stanton (whose four decade career includes performances from Paris, Texas to Alien) also makes a cameo appearance as the prison’s clueless cleaner, who acts as the comical guinea pig when the prison guards practice their executions.

The film is long - over three hours long, in fact - but in spite of the drawling southern accents, it doesn’t seem to drag. Instead it takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster that - along the line of films like Dead Man Walking - is one of the best arguments I’ve ever seen for abolishing the death penalty.

The film’s moving and intimate portrayal of friendship between men in adversity is worth every inch of the Oscar nomination. Perhaps this time around - after coming so close with The Shawshank Redemption in 1994 - Darabont will get to see the statuette on his mantelpiece.