A fine movie, but a few things bug me.

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2000)

Good Movie. The first time I saw it, when it first came out in 1994, I thought that it was fantastic. But now that I have seen it approaching 15 times now (thanks to TNT), there a few things that I have noticed that have convinced me it does not deserve to be in the top ten or even the top 50 of all time.
I find the film to be unrealistic. The prison seems to exist in some sort of hyper-reality where people are either bad guys or good guys but there is absolutely no grey area. The prison and the prisoners are also very clean, neither have the lived-in quality that you would expect. I do not know if this feeling I get from the movie was on-purpose by the director Darabont, but I feel as the though the authenticity of the movie is not there. I also feel as though the movie is very manipulative of the audience's emotions in the way that the story is used to make the viewer feel a certain way about a character. Of course all movies are manipulative in this way. But I am very aware of it when I watch Shawshank. I was also aware of it when I watch movies like The Green Mile or The Hurricane, I feel as though these movies do not give the audience an opportunity to decide for themselves. Lastly I think that this movie was carried by the supreme acting, and that if the Freeman and Robbins were not so good it would not even deserve to be in the top 250.
Otherwise, I rooted for this movie get the oscar in 1994 because I thought it was a superior movie to Forest Gump.