Not the greatest, but too good to miss

Rating: 9/10 (15 October 2000)

To partially repeat myself, "The Shawshank Redemption" is not the greatest film of all time. On the other hand, it isn't standard-brand Hollywood product either. Instead, like "Casablanca", "Shawshank" is Hollywood product raised to extraordinary levels through the mutual effort of craftspeople operating at peak levels. The acting, direction, camera work, editing, set design, and music all contribute, but none of these carry the film alone. The script, however, is the one indispensable element that the others rest upon, and it is the script upon which I want to concentrate. Not the plot, mind you--if you don't know already, it's a prison drama in which many terrible and wonderful things happen. Such stories can be told in many ways, but I especially admired the ways director/scripter Frank Darabont chose to convey Stephen King's original story.
Examples include patterns set up early in the film, such as the pro forma speech "Red" (Morgan Freeman) gives each time he faces the parole board, or apparent throwaway details that come to unexpected life as the plot thickens. The pacing is excellent, keeping viewers interested over the film's length (well over 23 hours) by punctuating the story's progress not only with the incidents of brutal violence one expects from a prison film, but also moments of unexpected grace.
Finally, it's interesting to note that in the year "Pulp Fiction" received so much hoo-rah over the ways writer/director Quentin Tarantino played with the movie's internal time, Darabont got little credit for doing some of the same things in "Shawshank", such as depicting the same sequence of events from different viewpoints when approaching the film's climax. (Not that "Pulp Fiction" is less than brilliant, but "Shawshank"'s approach to its own internal time was equally artful, if less flashy.)
The only things I could fault this film for are being manipulative, as well as more than a little predictable in the last 15 minutes or so. However, the previous 2 hours are so compelling, and set up so much emotional momentum, that it would take a titanic (if not "Titanic") sized object to drag the film down.
There's a great deal more to be said about the ways everyone involved--actors, set designers, musicians, etc.--does their part to bring "Shawshank" to life, but someone else will have to say it. Discover this treasure for yourself.