Not bad, but Seriously Overrated

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2006)

This is not a bad film, and I would recommend renting it. But its admirers who rank it as one of the best films of all time -- even above classics like Citizen Kane or The Godfather -- are seriously overrating it.
The popularity of this film apparently comes from its uplifting message about the power of hope. Nothing else in Shawshank Redeption is extraordinary. The acting is only good: indeed, Tim Robbins's acting of Andy Dufresne is two-dimensional. Morgan Freeman is much better as Red. The photography is unremarkable. Most seriously, however, the moral dilemmas in this film are melodramatic and black-and-white. Andy Dufresne is impossibly noble. The guards and, especially, the warden are unbelievably evil and corrupt. It's nice to think a prison would be reformed by building a nice library. But sorry, folks, the world is more complicated than that. At best, this film can be enjoyed as a kind of uplifting fable, a sort of fairy-story for adults. Nobody struggles with the ambiguities and complexities of real life in this film, and so the "redemption" it offers is false.
As a point of comparison, take another film in this "criminal redemption" genre -- Dead Man Walking, a film, significantly, by Tom Robbins. Here is real, tough, moral drama. Can we forgive the Shawn Penn character? Is his redemption real? The film poses these questions without answering them. Plus the acting is rich and nuanced, the direction riveting. Dead Man Walking is much better film than Shawshank Redemption because it's about real life.