Vastly Over-rated

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2008)

I enjoyed this movie, but I still regard it as one of the most vastly over-rated films of all time. The villains in the film were 2-dimensional caricatures. There were no shades of gray in this film whatsoever. I can accept such villains when some element of the fairy tale, some element of the supernatural is introduced. For instance, it was okay for Chigurh to be cartoonish in No Country For Old Men because he was clearly supposed to be a symbol, a force of nature. The warden in Shawshank Redemption, on the other hand, isn't a force of nature, merely a poorly-written character.
Honestly, the Shawshank Redemption was absorbing, but it wasn't a "great film" (in the capital-letters sense) by any stretch of the imagination.