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Released in American theaters in 1994, The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about a convicted murderer who claims to be innocent. Or at least that’s what it seems to be about the first time you watch it. With each additional viewing, the movie takes on new layers and becomes a movie about cruelty and corruption in prisons, about people who can’t adapt, the lengths a man will go to in order to stay sane, life changing friendships, and finally about redemption.
Tim Robbins plays the leading role of Andy Dufresne – a banker convicted of murdering his cheating wife and her boyfriend – with a delicate balance of sympathy and inner turmoil. The aloof and enigmatic Dufresne soon quits protesting his imprisonment and begins the task of blending in with the others in his cellblock. He calls upon Morgan Freeman’s character, Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding, the prison’s black market king pin, to secure a rock hammer, and the core of the movie begins.
Freeman serves as the narrator, and his voice masterfully takes the viewer across the decades the movie covers. Robbins’s character finds a way to put his banking talents to use inside the prison and is able to make life better for himself and the other inmates. He creates a library and begins to tutor high school dropouts towards diplomas. Along the way, he also helps the prison warden create a money-laundering scheme. All the while, his buddy Red is keeping the prisoners supplied with bootleg pin-up girls, cigarettes, and other types of contraband, as well as being Dufresne’s right-hand man. The two play off each other with near-perfect timing, and the rhythm in their dialog sounds completely natural.
This is still a prison movie, so there are the required sequences of prison rape, escape attempts, attempted murder (sort of), suicide behind bars, and the prison guards viscously beating inmates. None of those things get in the way of the many subtexts, though. The final scenes of the movie are absolutely natural for the characters, and the pay-off is well worth your time.
The Shawshank Redemption is a great movie to rent for a laid-back evening at home or a rainy afternoon.
