A rating over 9 on IMDb - That is impressive

Rating: 8/10 (1 December 2013)

This movie is just awesomely brilliant. Okay, English teachers may not like that description, but simply put, this movie is one great movie. This movie is about a prison in Maine named Shawshank. A wealthy banker, Andy Dufrense (Tim Robbins) is arrested, charged, and convicted for murdering his wife and her lover. He claims that he did not do it, but the evidence points directly to him. He claims that he is innocent, but so does everybody else in Shawshank. Andy, though, proclaims his innocence right through to the end. He says "the only time I became crooked was when I came to Shawshank".
The Shawshank Redemption is adapted from the Stephen King novel "Rita Heywood and the Shawshank Redemption", and as is typical for Stephen King, the horror comes not from the supernatural but from the natural. The horror here is of being thrown into prison an innocent man, and then never being able to leave because of the corruption all around. Andy is clearly innocent by the closing stages of the movie, but by that time he is such a key element to the Warden's plans, that there is no way he is ever going to be allowed to leave. Ebert speaks of the horror of time and of daily routine here, but more so there is the sense of alienation. Once one is inside the walls one can never really leave. When one prisoner, Brooks Halten (James Whitmore) is released, he kills himself due to the fact that he is free. Red (Morgan Freeman) says when he is finally released, that without the strict routine of the prison system and with the freedom of daily life, he just cannot cope.
Andy is different, he has hope, and he retains this hope right through until the end. We do not see the big picture until the end of the movie, when we are revealed all, but Andy remains calm, patient, and resolute, knowing that in the end he is going to be free. He is also an opportunist, he sees an opportunity and he takes it, and when he does, he gains the friends that he needs to survive in the prison. He is not a pushover, for when the sisters seek to violate them, he fights, and he fights brutally, but he knows that in the end he will be out and he puts up with it.
This movie is about hope. It is not a fantasy: Red says "if this was a fantasy then he would have fought them off and everything would have been fine, but it is not." This is real and King has pulled no punches. Yet also the hope is there; we see real characters with real fallibilities. Even Andy falls occasionally and is blackmailed into submission, but he has that hope and he always looks forward to freedom.