Hu-hu, let's have a redeeming debate over this

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2002)

It's a lovely story with nice guys (you'd love to make friends with) and bad guys (you'd love to hate). OK. Let's say it's the kind of entertaining stuff that makes you feel good... provided you are lenient enough to find it deep, genuinely humane, etc.
So you think it's a wonderful movie? Welly welly well. Maybe I need to tell you something about cinema. [Don't take it as a lesson from an infatuated Frenchman but simply as the point of view of a cinema lover.] Cinema is about images made emotions. Hence astoundingly good movies are way above the usual recipe: (good story + good story-telling) + (good characters + good actors) = good movie.
As long as it was, never did I felt emotions through images in The Shawshank Redemption. The good characters/actors/story-telling... had already killed every single spark of emotion. Especially the deadpan voice-over narration.
Bottom line: Shawshank Redemption is beautifully bundled, not beautifully crafted. Guess why Tim Robbins directed Dead Man Walking the year after.