The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, is a story about Andy Dufrene. Dufrene, a very successful banker, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. He is then sentenced to two life sentences in Shawshank prison. During his time at Shawshank, Andy goes through many different phases: the quiet phase, the getting beat up constantly phase, and finally his phase of fame. Because of his successes as a banker, he becomes a very valuable member of the prison to the guards and most importantly, to the warden. Andy was very well liked and respected throughout the prison which made him valuable to everyone. He made the most of his time at Shawshank until a chance of freedom was ruined by the corrupt warden and a corrupt system. Could Andy just accept his fate of spending his whole life in prison? 

 

This movie is probably now one of my favorite movies of all time. There is a very good reason that it is on the top 100 list. Darabont made very smart choices when casting this movie. One of the most interesting things to me was the casting of Morgan Freeman as Red. Because the movie starts in 1949 which was a time of major racial segregation, it was odd to me to see Red as such a respected character. However, I also think that this could have been one of his best casting choices just because Morgan Freeman has a way of making you believe everything he says. Tim Robbins was also a very smart casting choice. I thought that he did a very good job portraying Andy Dufrene. 

 

One of the most difficult things must have been lighting in the actual prison cells. Those cells only have one very small window which allows for very little light to come in. Also, at the end of the movie when Andy is in the sewer pipe, that must have been very difficult to get a good shot and have good lighting. One of my favorite scenes is at the end after he is out of the sewer. It is a very iconic scene that must have been very hard to get. Partially because they had to wait for a thunderstorm and a lot of rain to come.

 

I would definitely recommend this movie to just about anyone. Darabont attacks some major topics during this movie like institutionalization, violence in prison, friendship, loyalty, loneliness, and corruption in prisons. It is a very clever movie that was very very hard to predict. However, once the ending of the movie came along, everything made sense. All the very subtle parts and pieces came together and all I could think was "how could I not see this coming?" I usually get very bored during movies because I can usually predict what is going to happen. But this movie was very difficult to get bored of. I could hardly get my eyes peeled away from the screen. I highly recommend this amazing movie to anyone.