Simply put, a masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (6 July 2005)

Honestly, whenever you think of a good movie, what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about it? Is it the story? The characters? The setting? How about the acting? The writing? Or, most importantly in some cases, the directing? Did the movie go in the direction that it needed to go?
Some, if not all people think of at least one of these things. Some think about it all, and judge the movie by how well it held up under all of these matters it had to worry about.
I'm one of the latter. And I think that not only is "The Shawshank Redemption" the greatest adaptation of a story ever, it quite possibly might be the greatest film, ever. And if it isn't, it's damn close.
Seriously, seeing that "Shawshank" is at #2 on the all time 250 is, at least to me, a testament to how under-rated and under-appreciated it really is. Now, don't get me wrong... being the second greatest film ever is quite an honor, and any film lucky enough to receive it must be pretty damn good anyway. But seeing it in second place just reminds me of the 1995 Academy awards. This movie was nominated for 7 awards, and do you know how many it went home with? 0. In a just world, it would have swept.
But I'm being a little too bias, so let's just get on with the movie, eh?
Anyways, the movie takes place in the late 1940's and is about a man named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins, in the absolute finest performance of his entire career) who, in the very beginning of the film, is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Of course, we know he isn't guilty, but either way, he's sent to live out two life sentences at Shawshank, one of the toughest prisons in the world. Meanwhile, Red (Morgan Freeman, also in his finest performance) is denied parole again, after serving 20 years of a life sentence.
It should be known to most of you that this movie is entirely based off of a 90 page short story by Stephen King called "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", which was featured in one of his collections. The book is entirely made up of Red's passages, which means that in the movie he's going to become the narrator. Normally, this would become intrusive, but here, it shines. It's also important to point out that there is an entire scene in the movie that was never in the book, where Andy rebels and plays music over the intercom for the entire prison to hear. This not only shows a powerful thing called "hope", it shows just how talented Frank Darabont really is. After all, he's responsible for another underrated gem "The Green Mile".
But back to the story. Andy arrives at the prison, and after a very crappy first night in which he didn't make a sound, he finally meets Red, and they become very good friends while he's there for 20 years. We see him struggle, get abused by the "sisters", build a library, do accounting because his life on the outside was that of an accountant and many other things. One of the most powerful scenes of the film is when he is put in the hole for 2 months because he snooped around too much with the warden (Bob Gunton, in his usual asshole role) about the person who really killed his wife.
Top that off with amazingly good co-star performances by William Atherton and Clancy Brown, and it can't be beat.
Anyways, yeah, I'm not saying anything else except that this is truly deserving of the best film honors here, and I'd like to see it.
An honest to god amazing film.