An enduring testament to the human spirit

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 1998)

The great Morgan Freeman continues to spin out superlative performances. This is one of his finest, a difficult and complex portrayal of a veteran convict, who is so long a part of the numbing prison culture that we're somewhat surprised by his sympathetic understanding of the unfortunate Andy DuFresne, movingly interpreted by Tim Robbins. People are in prison, for the most part, because they belong there. Prisoners don't normally exude compassion for their fellow unfortunates, but Freeman's "Red" noticed right away that DuFresne was of different stuff. Their friendship cut across both racial and social lines, and that it was forged in the furnace of a prison conducted by so corrupt a warden as Norton, was a magnificent testimony to their bond. Clancy Brown as the warden's personal storm trooper could have been reduced to caricature, but he turned this difficult role into a memorable portrayal of mindless violence. The great revelation in this film was Bob Gunton as the warden. There has rarely been, if ever in film, a keener reading of a character given the charge of men who've been reviled by society, and thus forgotten and who are totally dependent upon his good will for their very survival. Norton was the essential bureaucrat who, given sufficient backing from an indifferent public, can build from the foundations up, a system which brutalizes and murders men, and which exploits the last vestiges of their self-respect for his personal ends. The narration by Freeman in his great baritone lent an authentic base line for the kaleidoscopic unfolding of the film. James Whitmore's poignant turn as a man doomed to death outside of prison is proof of what lengthy incarceration to do to a man, turning him into a slave who is addicted to the very structure which denies his humanity. That both DuFrense and "Red" each managed to leap over the abysses which yawned before them, was the great cathartic experience of the film.