Touching, heartwarming yet powerful! One of the greatest films ever and one of the greatest novel adaptations ever.

Rating: 8/10 (7 December 2010)

The Shawshank Redemption is a film telling that a wealthy banker, who's been wrongly prisoned for many years for being suspected of murdering his own wife, finally takes his revenge and redemption with the HOPE that never dies in his heart and his wisdom. The story's based upon Stephen King's novel of the similar name. But there are certain amount of differences.
When it comes to the question "why is it so excellent?", some may say that it's got a so-called great story and unpredictable twist near the end, but I don't take it that way. The plot in my opinion is average in terms of complexity and twists. Actually the twist is predictable from the very start where the film itself already gave you an obvious hint. But in terms of developing and building up the characters, the story's magnificent, while it becomes more epic in this adaption due to the differences from the book. There're some scenes that shock the audience like deaths of certain characters, which didn't happen in the original book. These scenes not only helped render a more hopeless and crueler world than that in the novel, but also built up Andy's and Redd's strong personalities with no doubt.
The friendship between the two main characters is a highlight too. What's especially mentioning is that the film doesn't even have a single female character despite a very tiny one at the beginning, who didn't even say a word by the way... This separates it from other mindless Hollywood films which always tend to show women's charm totally. Friendship is the most cherished thing along with "hope" here in this story, and sometimes friendship pulls us back into form and faith when we're lost - so does this movie!
The acting and score are also beyond awesome, accompanied by well- arranged cinematography. Morgan Freeman's narration makes it even more special as it lets you see through the deeper thoughts of characters. At the meantime, the balance of emotion is well controlled so it never gets contrived.
Some people who don't like the film either say the idea it's trying to teach us is great but falls simple and obvious, or think the scenes like Mozart's music scene is exaggerating. But I think neither of them makes sense, because great films use extraordinary events to teach you something, and that's what we called emphasis. As for that music scene, people longly prisoned in a hopeless place can be easily touched by the things that we, normal people can get easily, since for them, it's not easy to get.
So, this is an honest film that doesn't pretend to be anything hard to understand while having its own depth, about friendship, hope and the spirit of never giving up when life gets tough. It's a must-see for everyone who loves great movies.