A perennial reader's fave, Shawshank clearly has maintained its resounding emotional throb. It's a rare one al right: a guy's tearjerker. Also the movie that spawned a 1000 Morgan Freeman voiceovers.
Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
Rated: (R)
Directed by: Frank Darabont
Genres: Drama
Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman
"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."
-RED-
THE MOVIE OUTLINE
"Andy Dufresne, is sent to Shawshank Prison for the murder of his wife and secret lover. He is very isolated and lonely at first, but realises there is something deep inside your body, that people can't touch and get to....'HOPE'. Andy becomes friends with prison 'fixer' Red (Morgan Freeman), and Andy epitomises why it is crucial to have dreams. His spirit and determination, leads us into a world full of imagination, filled with courage and desire. Will Andy ever realise his dreams...?"
MY APPRAISAL
BEST PICTURE OF ALL TIME
Another Darabont masterpiece! Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are two movies you must see before you die. Honestly I can't quite decide which one is the best movie ever produced in the history of film-making. And I can't decide it until now. So when I put Shawshank Redemption on my #1, it doesn't mean The Green Mile is less or what. Both are simply WORKS OF GENIUS and more or less a tour de force.
I ain't gonna judge a single damn thing about Shawshank Redemption. What's left to criticize the universal measurement of perfection? The performances are exceedingly outstanding, gracefully beautiful pictures, and glorious original scores. Great scene selections and terrific character development, so the viewers easily root to each characters. We could feel the warmth of friendship between Andy and Red. I lost count at how many times I trembled at this movie's greatness.
This movie changed the way you see things in life and in fact, it may change your life. That seperates Shawshank Redemption from any other movies. Never in your life you see a movie this magical and compelling at the same time like this magic you have witnessed in Shawshank Redemption. No matter what you have to encounter in life, you own one thing that noone can't touch it....HOPE.
And it will set you free.
Andy Dufresne: "That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music?"
Red: "I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.
Andy Dufresne: "Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget."
Red: "Forget?"
Andy Dufresne: "Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours."
Andy Dufresne: That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music? Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here. Andy Dufresne: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Red: Forget? Andy Dufresne: Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours. Red: What're you talking about? Andy Dufresne: Hope.
One of the best prison movies of all time.
This is one of the movies that is legitimate in getting the amount of praise that it does. Everything is expertly done in this movie. I can easily watch this movie from any point and just love to sit and keep watching.
It is a great story about one man's struggle to make the best of his situation by mental will, hope, and friendship. Tim Robbins is great in this role, he makes his character work perfectly.
And then you have Morgan Freeman who is also perfect as "the only guilty man in Shawshank." He narrates the film wonderfully and is himself great in his role.
Everyone in the cast is great including the other prisoners, the guards, and the warden.
Its a great looking movie, with cinematography by Roger Deakens, who was able to create a great look to a bleak prison atmosphere. The score of this movie by Thomas Newman is wonderful and powerful as well, certainly being extremely fitting in the many memorable moments. There are many memorable scenes and lines throughout.
Andy Dufresne: I understand you're a man who knows how to get things.
It is a long movie, but never boring. The movie deals with dark subject matter, but still manages to bring lightness to many scenes.
It's hard for me to think of anyone not enjoying this movie, because it is very well done. A wonderful movie.
Andy Dufresne: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? Red: No. Andy Dufresne: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.
To start off with a clean saying, I FUCKING LOVED THIS MOVIE! This movie amazed me every second, every word. I loved it from beginning to end. I think that this may be the best movie ever made. To think that Stephen King, the master of horror, came up with such a delight to watch.
The acting in this movie was just perfect. Morgan Freeman does amazing, as usual, as his charecter named Red. A man who knows all about Shaweshank and is about to make a new best friend who comes to Shawshank for murdering his wife and her lover. But he says he's innocent. He's played by Tim Robbins who also plays an astounding role. Every actor, even the co-stars did excellent in this masterpeice of a film.
The plot of this movie is amazing too! Every thing that happened in this movie amazed me. EVERYTHING! Agian, EVERYTHING! A very compelling story about friendship.
This movie has everything a great fantastic movie needs.
1.A Great Ending
2.A Great Dark Twist
3.Little Humor
4.Action
5.A Narrator
This movie just amazed me. It went right down the list that a great incredible movie needs.
Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are just amazing. Please watch this movie. It is compelling and amazing!
This movie is absolutely amazing! I would give it 10 stars if i could! The story is very powerful and unlike any other that I have seen before. Watching this should make you feel sad, but the ending leaves you with a really nice feeling. It really is all about hope, redemption and freedom. The cast were perfect for their roles, especially the two main characters played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Overall this is one of the best movies I have ever seen! Definitely one of my faves!
One of the greatest films ever maid. A classic. Extroadinary, deeply moving, outstanding and magnificent. A masterpiece in every way. Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins are remarkable, they both give towering and brilliant performances. A film of great power and triumphant of the human spirit. This is a film that is totally unforgettable. An effective and wonderful drama. Haunting, engaging and unsetteling. But at the end it puts a pure smile on your face. One of my all-time favorites. it astonishes you in ways you wont belive. A captivating, astonishing, gripping comepelling and breathtaking motion picture. A beautiful work of art.
Supposedly one of those critic-abandoned, Oscar-denied, snubbed-thanks-to-snobbery-but-loved-by-the-public films, obviously some of these things are undeniable facts (it was not well received critically, but is extraordinarily popular with the average movie-goer, for instance, and certainly literally did not win Oscars) but some are purely subjective.
Is this going to be a veritable evisceration of this film? Actually, no. I seem to be on a purely coincidental (well, circumstantial) Stephen King adaptation kick, and I've made known repeatedly what I think of his writing--I don't like it. I think he has nice enough ideas and often even plots, but I think he gets mired in unnecessary detail and grating, unrealistically immature dialogue (there's a tendency for his characters to sound like middle schoolers who just learned how to swear and find it so "cool" to say "shit" every other sentence). But, we lose that disadvantage when someone else is adapting, especially when they are scripting. It seems like the dialogue is rarely preserved, but often enough the tone and overall plot are kept.
I never got around to "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," before I realized I couldn't stand King's writing (I got through a number of books, for the record, and did actually like some of them) so I can't attest to the accuracy or inaccuracy of any part of this movie. Obviously I know the title was changed slightly (and according to the cast is still too difficult for many people, having been complimented for their work on the "Shipshape Redemption" and the like) and I heard in the special features that Ellis "Red" Redding was originally a white Irishman (here played by Morgan Freeman, who is neither) but other than that, I hear it's faithful, but can say nothing one way or the other myself. I did, however, read The Green Mile (one of the King books I DID enjoy) which Frank Darabont also adapted in both writing and direction, and recall it being very accurate, though I haven't seen it since the theatre (a fun story there which will have to wait until I purchase and then watch the film, probably 6 months or more after the purchase date....). A few lines felt like King lines after I replayed the words in my head, but felt as though they had been twisted by talented actors into sounding at least a bit more realistic and less obsessed with sounding "cool" to the more juvenile elements of the world, but that may just be my bias against King rearing its ugly head again. Nothing against the man, mind you, but I think his writing really does stink and that he gets far more credit than he deserves. But I digress. Again.
Anyway, this film is criticized by snobs as being too sentimental, or something to that effect--at least that's the gist of the negative reviews I've seen and heard about over the years. This is very silly, and I hate it when snobbery comes to this. I can at least understand the reasoning for snobbery about limited budgets (though I disagree and don't like that attitude) but cannot stand the types who devalue a movie simply because it achieves its own aims. I don't think the movie was trying NOT to be sentimental, so it hardly seems fair to criticize it for achieving a different end. Does one have to like it for this? Absolutely not. That's a perfectly acceptable reason not to like a film, but it doesn't decrease its value.
Tim Robbins mentions repeatedly in the special features that he feels the film is a movie about platonic friendship between two men, something he repeatedly bemoans the lack of in cinema. I don't think he's wrong in that, I think there is a lack of films with that topic in them, yet I have difficulty seeing the movie as being about the friendship between Red and Andy Dufresne (Robbins). Their friendship is definitely present, definitely important, and definitely well-played, but it feels to me far more that the movie is about Dufresne's re-arrangement of the prison, from the way he uses his outside-world skills as a banker to gain favour with the guards and Warden Norton (Bob Gunton, looking for all the world like that creepy, mis-guided evil preacher who claims our divinely gifted hero's magical powers are the work of the devil and stops him from saving the schoolchildren from burning in a satanic fire in some movie or other--that great mix of slick, clean, self-assured morality mixed with a hideously selfish, stubborn, blinded sadistic streak) to his rapidly built friendship with the other inmates to his attempts to build up the prison library on to his final acts as a prisoner in the film. He comes in as a man convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover, with the audience unsure of his innocence or his guilt, and slowly begins to re-arrange things from the inside, even as he is held back by uptight, moralizing and sadistic guards and tortured and raped by less well-intentioned prisoners (led by Bogs Diamond, played by Mark Rolston--who sci-fi fans should remember as Aliens' Private Drake, as well as a seemingly neverending slew of TV guest appearances).
Robbins is mostly subdued and subversive as the man who shakes up the status quo of this prison, bringing hope to men who spend decades in cells until they can't understand life outside them (memorably encompassed by James Whitmore as Brooks Hadlen) and is certainly eminently likeable as Andy, though I'd say perhaps not as much so as Morgan Freeman, who easily takes a role obviously not originally intended for him and makes himself an undeniably perfect casting choice.
So, the film is very good, but not quite so good as to be in the ridiculously high place it is on IMDb's Top 250. But it's not bad. And it's not something I think needs to be thrown out of there entirely, but it's just perfectly slick, well-made entertainment, which is absolutely fine. My complaint, if anything, is that the dirt bears that grossly meticulous approach, as if things have been oh-so-carefully weathered to the right age, and it comes off fake for all its reality, which tends to bother me. Like they put so much research and careful detail-planning into the trees they forgot the forest. Satisfies the nitpickers, but not the overall feeling, in my opinion. But it's not a great distraction, or even much of a minor one--more symptomatic of a systemic issue for me than anything else, and nothing I hold specifically against this film.
Special note, of course, to the great Clancy Brown, almost universally relegated to these roles as absolute sadists (see also: Kurgan) who live for the pain of others. Admittedly, he's good at it, but these actors I like so much I more want to feel good about rooting for, darnit, give him a good role! He can be an antihero, sure, but a protagonist, darnit!
about life on the inside and friendship. well directed by frank darabont. not many big time actors. only tim robbins and morgan freeman. the supporting cast were excellent. it plays delicately on the senses immersing you in a powerful story of hope and fear. it's got to the stage where i know alot of the lines off by heart. i'm sure you all do too.. so there's no point reciting them here! a very well thought out and completely satisfying ending also to cap it off
I used to not be much for this, and it probably is overrated, but I've been won over a bit. Something about my increased worry about the prison system and etc. stuff aren't you glad I took the time to flesh this out.
A witty and thoughtful prison story written by Stephen King, who took a departure from his horror writing for this thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting tale.
Quite simply - a masterpiece. The Shawshank Redemption is a film of rawness, showcasing raw brutality, raw remorse, and raw emotion that reaches inside and strikes a chord through every member of the audience. This is a film that holds contradictions in itself where it holds a formula so alien, yet so familiar, and yet manages to transcend film and make this a true visual and emotional experience. The prison walls act not only as a barrier from the inmates escaping to us, but also us escaping to them, and this is a theme that hits very soundly throughout the picture where hope is a lost ingredient in the minds of men who become institutionalised by their surroundings. The metaphors of this film reverberate through each scene where simple lines of dialogue taken for colloquial language mean much more than first impressions imply and through this an added layer of depth is conveyed through this picture. The acting and interaction of this piece are sublime, they truly are, and it is this that gives the film the added sense on integrity, of something that draws you into the ongoing preceedings. With a plot that encompasses a true insight into those we see as bad, who in contrast to the guards, the protectors, are actually good, and combining it with mind contorting lessons of morality and hope, we are given a film that truly must be seen to be believed.
MCT:November 17, 2008
"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."
MY APPRAISAL
MCT:October 28, 2007
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