My 12 year old daughter raved about this film

Rating: 10/10 (15 September 2007)

I just saw this movie for the first time. My daughter watched it first when she was 12 when it first came out. She went on and on about it saying how great it was then in about 1995. She also loved "Trading Places". I guess the moral of both of these stories is that the good guys win in the end. I now know what she was talking about. It is a great movie, and I can see why it appeals to women.
The movie is set in a prison, with the time old tradition of a close friendship over many years of an innocent young man as the hero and an "old lag" who knows all the ropes, in this case Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. This is the same formula earlier used in the films "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "An Innocent Man", both films which are highly recommended, if you liked this one.
The film, although made in 1994, goes back to a time when good wins out over evil. unfortunately the fashion for a long time in the nineties movies was for bad to win out, as in "the Terminator" and other movies. The bad guys are as usual the prison boss, The Warder and his Second in Command, the Uniformed Chief Officer. There is a highly unusual twist at the end of the movie, in which the good guys win out. This is a highly improbable situation, but fantasy is allowable in movies. One character of note is that of an old man, played by James Whitmore, who rescues a tiny bird, and nurtures it for years. Thank goodness it doesn't get killed by some other evil person, as usually happens. The old man has to cope with pressures in the outside after he is released.
The overarching theme of the movie is one of hope. No matter how bad things get, there is always hope that thing will get better. It also shows that it is possible to have a friendship between black and white people, as the older man, the main character's friend, is a black man. The thing that this movie gave me, is that I can see how wise my daughter already was at 12 years of age, and more importantly, it gives hope and a good philosophy for the rest of my life. I'm sure that it will do the same for those of you who see this movie too.
I am unsure as to whether it deserves to be rated the best movie of all time. However movies with hope and goodness as their main themes are generally up there, take "Gone With the Wind", "Schindler's List" and "Lord of the Rings" as examples of this.