One of the few cases where I can't say the book was better

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2016)

Anyone who has ever read any Stephen King knows that a good 98% of the time the movie is never as good as the book. Usually the movie loses so much of the characters from the books. I actually didn't read the story the movie is based on (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption)until years after seeing the movie a few hundred times. That's why, when I read it for the first time I was very surprised to find myself saying "wow, the movie actually followed the book!!" to the point that, in an odd coincidence, the movie was on AMC when I was in the last few pages of the story and I held off onreading the last part, Reds talk about Hope, until it came up in the movie. And, as I was reading, even though the book told us Red was in fact a white, red headed Irish man, I heard Mr. Freeman telling me the whole story as I read it.