Excellent

Rating: 10/10 (9 October 2015)

Excellent film of the great director Frank Darabont. Strong acting. Moderately inventive story, but not exactly unpredictable. A pleasantly uplifting film, but don't expect a transformative experience. Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a gangly young banker when he enters Maine's fortress like Shawshank State Prison in 1946, accused of killing his unfaithful wife and her lover. Though his protestations of innocence don't carry much weight, his shy manner and decency does. Befriended by Red (Morgan Freeman), a veteran con who is the prison fixer, he soon draws a circle of other boyishly likable prisoners around him, including William Sadler as a sweet-tempered thug and James Whitmore as a cuddly old man who is the prison librarian. In a film that stands or falls on the central character's amiability, Tim Robbins is loose and effective, though the real performance here is from Morgan Freeman, whose projected affection for his friend really determines how we feel about him. Darabont's direction is precise and assured, without being terribly imaginative.
10/10