That spirit has surfaced from time to time in pictures like "Local Hero" or Malcolm Mowbray's "A Private Function" and "Out Cold." There was a glimmer of it last year in another British comedy about gardening (of a sort), "Saving Grace." Gardening, along with dog shows, cheese and Shirley Bassey, is one of those English obsessions that seem ripe for comedy. Just how much of an obsession it is can be deduced from this movie's title. Americans say someone has a green thumb; the British include all the digits.

But instead of going for the cockeyed comedy of the situation, the writer-director, Joel Hershman, has given us a redemption picture. The rebirth of the human spirit is generally a sappy idea for movies or books, and prison movies in which convicts realize the wrongness of their ways and attempt to atone are particularly prone to sentimentality. "Greenfingers" is no exception. At one point, the British home secretary suggests that the convict/gardeners make a rock garden with a strawberry bower to symbolize the beauty growing out of cold, hard surroundings.

It's a terrible idea and the movie plays it for laughs. But that's also the soggy metaphor that the movie capitalizes on. We don't need to be told the restorative effect that bringing something to life might have on convicted murderers, though we are, implicitly and explicitly, in scene after scene. There's barely a patch of dialogue that doesn't tell us how we're meant to be reacting to a scene instead of trusting us to discover the meanings for ourselves. It's as if the movie is more concerned about our rehabilitation than the convicts'.

	"Greenfingers" Written and directed by Joel Hershman Starring Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, David Kelly Print story E-mail story

"Greenfingers" is certainly pleasant enough, and if you can put the preachiness out of mind it's entertaining, in its square, conventional way. (Though it's not as funny as another square comedy making the rounds, the French farce "The Closet," which features deft performances by Daniel Auteuil, rapidly becoming one of those actors who's good in everything, and Gérard Depardieu.)

The real men whom this story is based on, inmates at Her Majesty's Prison Leyhill had (by 1998, when a New York Times article on them appeared) won two gold medals at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, the yearly invitation-only competition of the Royal Horticultural Society. Their enthusiasm had led to a 1,000-acre arboretum open to the public, plants supplied to surrounding towns, and a service that grows and distributes organically grown vegetables to other prisons.

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