never give up hope

Rating: 10/10 (1 July 2005)

"The Shawshank Redemption" should have won Best Picture for 1994. A story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) getting falsely convicted of murder and sent to the hellish Shawshank prison, the movie is beyond amazing. In prison, Andy meets Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), who was imprisoned many years earlier. Red gets Andy a poster of Rita Hayworth. Over the next twenty years, Andy experiences all the horrors that one would expect in jail: beatings by the guards, rapes by other inmates, and so on. But he never gives up hope.
This movie, like "Carrie", "The Shining", "Dolores Claiborne", "The Green Mile" and "Hearts in Atlantis", just goes to show what a great author Stephen King is. When we think of horror, we think of spooky horror, but "The Shawshank Redemption" is a different kind: personal horror. Pure genius. I can only hope that in the coming years, this movie is recognized as what it is: a masterpiece. I can't believe that it won no Oscars!