Review of The Shawshank Redemption (1994) by Ben L — 25 Apr 2016

There are only a select few movies that I would say are genuinely perfect, but Shawshank Redemption is on that list. I literally cannot think of one thing that I would change in this movie. While I haven't seen the whole movie from start to finish in a long time, it is one of those films that snags me whenever I catch it on TV and I cannot change the channel. There's a lot of praise I could lavish on this film, and I would probably bore you to tears. Instead of exhausting the entire thesaurus of positive adjectives and adverbs let me just take a few sentences to try and explain why this film touches me so deeply. For starters, Shawshank manages to get us sympathizing with the protagonist from the very beginning. Despite the fact that we have no evidence presented to make us believe Andy's story, the courtroom scenes at the beginning are designed to make the prosecutor look overly aggressive and Andy look innocent, so we're on his side instantly. As a result we're going through this ordeal with him, and every harsh moment he suffers feels like a personal offense to me.

Next is probably the most shallow of my reasons for loving Shawshank, but it's the narration from the amazing Morgan Freeman. When the film reaches those moments where it could drag, instead we get to listen to his dulcet voice explaining what happened as we skip a section of time. Because of this I don't feel a single frame of film is wasted in the entire 2+ hours of the movie. But the big thing that pushes this film over the edge for me, into being one of my favorite films of all time, is the Redemption. I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything because it's in the title, but that conclusion makes my heart swell so much that I almost can't contain it. When a film takes you through the lowest depths of despair and suffering, but then has a redemptive and happy ending, it is something truly special. The highs become so much more enjoyable because the lows were so terrible. Again, I could write for days about the greatness of Shawshank Redemption, but I'll simply say WATCH IT! And if you've seen it, WATCH IT AGAIN! Every single time I see any segment of the film (even just the last few scenes) I feel like my time was not wasted.