Review Redux

Rating: 5/10 (26 January 2020)

In my original review, I said that I didn't hate Shawshank as much as I hated the fanbase for making it the most overrated movie ever made. On rewatching the movie, my opinion of it is lower than ever. Nevermind how Andy's escape thru the sewage pipe doesn't make much sense (during the rain storm it would've been filled with water and he wouldn't have been able to get in, assuming that in real life they even had pipes people can fit into, or how anyone could reach Mexico from New England while there's a massive manhunt for them (which is called off unrealistically quickly) despite only a few hour head-start, and how in the hell does he just walk into a bank and walk out? His picture would be circulated by then)), everything about the movie rings hollow and false; it is Hollywood escapism at its cheapest and most artificial. I felt as nonplussed by it as ever - well, that's not true - the movie is supposed to be about hope and all that typical toddler b.s., but on this viewing I found it incredibly depressing. The movie is extremely depressing when you really watch it, but everyone always focuses on the cheesy, artificial fake fantasy ending, so they forget the bleakness of the rest. It's all the more infuriating when you hear of real-life stories like Benjamin Spencer, a man who 30 years ago was falsely imprisoned and years later, even after he was proven innocent, thru a loophole, they still have him locked up to this day, which makes me even more fed up with this childish b.s. complete crap movie for the masses. Or how about all those innocent people who died in the Nazi camps? No escape for them. The more you compare this melodrama to real life, the more infuriatingly empty it is. Also, Andy's escape feels completely unearned. You don't actually get a sense of Andy's suffering (he's unrealistically nonplussed by just about everything. He feels like a cardboard stand-in). For instance, he gets sent to the hole a lot, but the movie glosses over it - he locks himself in warden's office and Morgan just gives a one line narration of how he got sent to the hole for a week, but it just instantly cuts to him joining them for lunch. The only time you see him in solitary is when warden opens the door to talk to him later on in a brief 30 second scene. That's it. It's not like Papillon where you actually spend time with Steve McQueen in the hole and you actually see him breaking down, getting lines on his face, palpable distress worsening over time. You don't get that sense with Shawshank that just glosses over all that. Also, Andy's escape feels like a cheat - warden pulls away the poster and the hole is just there, despite us never seeing Andy working on it. It's not like Escape From Alcatraz where the whole movie is planning the escape and you actually feel the tension of times when Eastwood is nearly caught working away in his cell. In Andy's cell, the hole just magically appears there, since the movie never even indicates its existence - that's not a twist, that's a cheat. Warden pulling back the poster and seeing this tunnel there is the equivalent of how in Northwest Hounded Police, the Wolf takes a pencil and literally draws a door on the wall and just walks out. I heard prisoners like this movie well enough, but I would venture that's because of the escape fantasy they can relate to, not because it's a good movie. You can show inmates a poorly acted, shot, edited, prison break-out movie and they would still probably applaud if the character escapes. What does this even add to the prison genre? It's better than most prison movies, but what does it add?