Drugstore.com Coupons
How others will see it. The Shawshank Redemption consistently ranks among the highest-rated films at imdb.com. It has legions of ardent admirers, who find the story uplifting and inspirational. After all, it begins with a convicted murderer in prison, getting raped on a regular basis by sadistic thugs, and ends up with the same man wealthy and free. And with his best bud, to boot. It doesn't get any better than this, at least until cable television is invented.
How I felt about it. Most people watch movies for entertainment, rather than enlightenment or evaluation. Fair enough. From an entertainment perspective, The Shawshank Redemption is inspirational. The critic sees a different film. It is, of all things, an understated comedy.
There's no other place to categorize it. How else to explain it? Morgan Freeman tells the parole board, literally, "I don't give a [censored]." And they grant him parole! I guess he said the magic word.
This film makes a hero out of a man who stalks his wife with a handgun, who launders money for a corrupt official, and who breaks out of prison. There are multiple counts of felonies involved. This man isn't a hero, he's a thief.
Early in the movie, we actually have bad criminals in Shawshank. These are the Sisters, the very stereotype of menacing prison rapists. After they get theirs, to the presumed applause of the audience, the story quickly moves past them, and from then on, every con in Shawshank's a simple good ole boy, certainly less evil than the sadistic guards and crooked, murdering warden.
Andy must really be smart after all, since he knows how to put a poster back on the wall without being in the room to do so. He must have memorized the bible without spending any screen time reading it, since he can quote scripture along with the warden, both of whom are blasphemous. Robbins, er, Andy, defaced a bible to store his rock picker, which apparently escaped twenty years of cell inspections by being held in his hand (there's a great hiding place).
We will cover only briefly the implausibility of Freeman remembering his conversation with Andy sufficiently to find the hiding place for the money and letter. We will also note that while it is possible to play opera music over the prison PA system, it is not possible that every inmate will stand at attention in amazement for several minutes. Such things only happen in movies, when actors do as directed.