The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
WARNING! This review contains spoilers
Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins, Bob Gunton; d. Frank Darabont; A

When we think of prison, what usually comes to mind is a lonely, tourturous place where criminals go to be punished for their crimes. The stories we hear from prison are typically negative: Those torrid stories of abuse, rape, mental tourture, and death. We see programs where juvenile deliquents are sent to prison to get "scared" by convicts, who tell them how it really is in prison. Naturally, it's rare to hear any sort of uplifting story from jail, and if you do hear any, they're usually fictional stories of literature and the silver screen. The Shawshank Redemption is one the best of such films that I've seen. Sure, it's predictable, but the film is so well-crafted, and the story so rich that you easily forget those things that might be considered a flaw.

The Shawshank Redemption begins in the 1940's, and is narriated by Shawshank prison inmate Ellis Boyd Redding (Morgan Freeman), or "Red" for short, but it seems like the main focus of this film is the aloof, mysterious Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a banker who is arrested and convicted for the murder of his wife and her golf-pro lover. He is perplexing to Red, who, when Andy first arrives at Shawshank, loses a pack of cigarrettes when Andy doesn't crack on his first night in prison. In fact, he says nothing, and instead another "fresh fish" (or new inmate) who is called "Fat Ass" (Frank Medrano) is the first to crack, childishly calling out for his mother, and in one terifying moment, is beaten to death by a ruthless officer (Captian Byron Hadley played by Clancy Brown) who wants to keep him quiet. Andy does not say anything for a while, only once to ask Red and his friends what "Fat Ass"s name was. It takes Andy months before he has a conversation with someone, and that someone is Red. Red, being the head "merchant" of Shawshank, is asked by Andy to get a small rock hammer (we all know where this is heading, of course). After that conversation, Andy and Red become friends, and Andy is accepted into Red's group of friends, even being included in those people whom Red pulls some strings for to help fix the roof of Shawshank prison. Andy, like he does in several moments in this film, does two things at once in return for Red's favor: He first makes a move to raise his status with the staff of the prison by offering his finacial services to Hadley, whose brother had recently died and had left him with money that would surely be gobbled up by the IRS, only if his "coworkers" get cold beers in return. Pretty soon, Andy is doing financial favors for every officer in Shawshank prison, including the strict warden, Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). (Somewhere during these events, Andy asks Red to get him a poster of Rita Hayworth) With such a high status among the officers, it's only natural that he gets his revenge with the so-called "bull queers" (during Red and Andy's first conversation, Andy asks Red to tell this ruthless group of inmates that he's "not a homosexual." "Neither are they," repiles Red, "You have to be human first.") who have mercilessly beaten and harrased Andy, despite his fighting back. He's also allowed to help out inmate Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) with the prison's small and unimpressive library. So, what does he do? He writes several letters to the State Senate asking for money to fund for the prison library. Annoyed at Andy's many requests, they send him a grant of $200 and some used books from charitable libraries, to which Andy replies that he needs to write two letters a week instead of one. What follows then is one memorable scene when Andy, amazed by all the boxes of books and records, locks an officer in the bathroom and locks the door to the warden's office, and places a record of opera over the PA system. Prisoners, taken aback by the beautiful peice, that appeard out of the blue, can do nothing but sit back and listen (Red narriates "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singin' about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singin' 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 at Shawshank felt free."). The moment ends abruptly when the warden and crew break in and subsequently lock Andy in solitary confinement for two weeks. But, the punishment, like everything else that happens to him, never breaks his spirit.

Eventually, Andy gets what he wants in regards to the library, as the state senate allows to pay the prison $500 for its library. Andy uses that money to expand the library into a large, impressive one, complete with well-known classic works and educational books. Andy also begins helping out other prisoners by helping them get their GEDs. Meanwhile, Andy' becoming a real "crook" by getting involved with the warden's scams, even creating an invisible partner, Randall Stevens, who exists only on paper ("He's a phantom, an apparition...I conjured him out of thin air. He doesn't exist, except on paper...Mr. Stevens has a birth certificate, driver's license, social security number...The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook."). At the same time that he's doing scams, he's helping out a new inmate, a brash young criminal named Tommy Williams (former Ally McBeal star Gil Bellows), with education by helping him get his GED. As it turns out, Tommy met a man in prison before, a man who confessed to Tommy that he was the one who actually killed Andy's wife and her lover. Andy, seeing a way out of prison, goes to the warden with this life-changing information. But the warden has become too dependant on Andy's financial knowledge, and dimisses Andy's case, throwing him in solitary confinement, now for a whole month, to keep him quiet. While Andy is locked up, Tommy, who when taking his GED test had gotten fustrated and threw it in the trash, gets the results of his GED. Tommy passes with a C adverage, which no doubt would have made Andy proud. Unfortunatley, Tommy is unable to celebrate his acedemic acheivement for long, as the coniving warden arranges Tommy's "accidental" murder, killing any chances of Andy getting out of prison. Finally, after two months of solitary confinement, Andy is released, still as strong as he was before he was before those two months, but now with an overwhelming sense of gloom. He talks to Red about feeling guilty about his wife's murder, that even though he did not physically kill his wife, his stone cold persona drove her away ("My wife used to say I'm a hard man to know. Like a closed book. Complained about it all the time. She was beautiful. God, I loved her. I just didn't know how to show it, that's all. I killed her, Red. I didn't pull the trigger, but I drove her away and that's why she died - because of me, the way I am."). He aslo confesses that he has dreams of going to Zihuatenejo, a town in Mexico, and starting a new life in the Pacific: "It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. Open up a little hotel right on the beach. Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new. Take my guests out charter fishing...You know, in a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things." Red, though, dimisses Andy's dream, thinking only of the situation that they are in now. Red admits he's afraid of the "outside" because he's been "institutionalized," that is, he's become used to the structured prison life (he says the same about the old librarian Brooks, whom, shortly after he is released from prison, commits suicide because he can't take the fast, unstructured life of the outside world), and he also thinks that Andy's dream of going to Mexico are "shitty pipe dreams." "I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is." Andy, seeming defeated, or maybe angry, gets up, saying "Yeah, right. That's the way it is. It's down there and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." But, before he leaves, he asks that if Red manages to get released from prison, that he go to a wheat feild in in Buxton, where he can find a fence with a peice of volcanic glass (note that Andy is also an avid amature geologist), and underneith it is something that he wants Red to have.

From that point, we, and Red, are lead to believe that Andy has finally reached his "breaking point." When Red finds out that Andy requested a 6 foot peice of rope, Red is concerned for his friend's life, fearing that he might commit suicide. That night, Red sits up all night, a thunderstorm brewing outside, afraid that Andy might leave this world by his own hand. And, the next day, Red finds out that Andy did leave, but he certainly didn't meet his maker. During headcount the next morning, Andy does not come out of his cell. An irriated officer marches up to his cell only to see that he's not there. No bars have been broken, and it seems that almost everything is in its right place. The warden, also extreamly irriated, comes up to Andy's cell, and becomes histerical. He begins questioning Red, and then finally the poster on Andy's wall (who has gone from Rita Hayworth, to Marylin Monroe, and now Raquel Welch). Agitated, he throws a rock at the poster, and for a few seconds the camera does not move, it just shows his reaction. The rock didn't bounce back, nor did it fall on the ground. Instead, in went straight through the poster. The warden frantically tears the poster off of the wall to reveal a large hole - a tunnel, an escape tunnel. Yes, you've guessed it, Andy escaped. Earlier in the film, he looked around his cell and saw that people wrote their names on the wall. So, he decides to put his rock hammer to use and write his name on the wall. But when he gets to the "n", a rather sizable chunk of wall falls off. Andy, being the amature geologist, asseses that thi part of the wall must be hollow, and thus very easy to chip off with that small rock hammer. So, after years and years of chipping, and three posters to cover up the hole, Andy's able to slip away in the night, complete with some paperwork and clothes he managed to slyly steal from the warden, without any trace. And then, the next day, the "phantom" Randall Stevens comes to collect his money, and guess who Randall bears a striking resemblance to? Meanwhile, the poor warden, who's just a ball of nerves after learning about Andy's intracate escape plan and cover-up (including a Bible where, starting at the book of Exodus, the shape of a rock hammer was cut out). A few days later, Red receives a postcard from Fort Hancock, Texas, which only means that Andy is indeed going to that place on the pacific. The next scene, and the third such scene in the film, Red is up once again for rehibilitation. Now before, he had gone and told the officers only what they wanted to hear: "Yes sir... I can honestly say I am no longer a threat to society." And each time, they rejected his parole. But now, a tired and weary Red gives them an answer out of the blue:

"Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means...I know what you think it means. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?...There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. And not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. 'Rehabilitated?' That's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit."

He gets his parole.

Like Brooks, Red is shipped off to the outside world in a bus. He's put in a halfway house and now works in a grocery store. He doesn't like the outside world, he's been too "institutionalized." But the only reason why he doesn't take his own life like Brooks is because of that promise he made to Andy. Like he said, he goes to Buxton, looks for the oak tree and the fence with the volcanic rock. Underneith the rock is a tin box, and inside the tin box, a letter, adressed to Red, along with some money, which no doubt is for Red to go to Mexico and join Andy in whatever he's doing in Mexico. Red takes the money and indeed uses it to go to Mexico, where, on the Pacific, he finds Andy fixing up an old boat, like he said. And now the two are finally back together, allowed to be friends still, but now both free, on an ocean that has no memory...

I was persueded to see The Shawshank Redemption by a good internet buddy who claimed this was his favorite film, and I can perfectly see why he loves it. I'm not a 90's film buff but I can easily say that this is one of the best of the 90's. A well crafted film with an excellent script and an excellent cast. What I love most about The Shawshank Redemption, besides the perfect on screen relationship between Freeman and Robbins, is the fact that there is absolutley, positively no useless information in this film. Every scene, every line, every object has some kind of significance, be it the rocks that Andy collects, the rock hammer, or even Red saying Andy has "shitty pipe dreams" (because he does, after all, escape in a sewage pipe!). I loved how everything that happened in the film came together in the end, when Red was reciting to us how Andy escaped. Another thing I love about the script is the superb diolouge. I remember that another friend of mine complained that not every film has to have "sound bite" dialouge to have great diolouge. The Shawshank Redemption may have "sound bite" dialouge, but it in no way ruins the film. There are so many excellent peices of dialouge, especially those spoken by Freeman as the narriator. The characters of this film are equally as well written. If you can't tell already, I really was interested in the character of Andy. He is a strong, inspiring figure, he'll do anything to reach his dream of ultamate redemption: To live on the ocean that doesn't ask questions, that won't look down on him just because he's a convict (even though an innocent one). But there's too much that I love about the plot...

Likewise, the performances from the cast are very strong. Of course, the leads are excellent, and Freeman is able to narriate the film smoothly. His best scene is his final parole meeting, with that great speech he delivers. Freeman plays his role perfectly, as a man who's given up because he's too realistic. Red has no dreams, he just knows that he'll be forever bound to the prison walls of Shawshank, free or not. Robbins plays Andy with the right amount of silent power and slyness to pull his character off conviningly. James Whitmore as the sweet buy tragic Brooks is also noticable, his best scene being when he treatens the life of another convict just to keep himself in prison. Also noticable are Bob Gunton as the warden and Clancy Brown as the ruthless officer, both play their roles with the right amount of terrifying menace.

I really think this is a film not to be missed. Predictable it may be, but how could you bemoan such petty issues in face of such an excellent film? Besides, not every film has to be an unpredictable peice of pretentious art, anyway.

© Vert A Go Go Reviews 2001