"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

Rating: 10/10 (1 August 2011)

I have grown up watching Bollywood movies, full of overacting by overpaid, overfed 'heroes'. It was in college that i got to see some fine Hollywood films and this one was probably the finest of the lot. This film at first appears to be a story about life in prison. It fully describes every small experience of a person serving a long prison sentence. Life is not easy there for a lot of reasons. The screenplay is ably supported by Morgan Freeman's brilliant narration offering a second-person view of life in shawshank. But Tim Robbins steals the show by aptly underplaying the part of a wrongly sentenced, wealthy banker.The last forty minutes of this film, however, help raise it a couple of levels above other cinematic masterpieces. You don't need a weapon to fight. It is easy to take away a man's bread, even his freedom, but impossible to take away his hope.