The Shawshank Redemption (4 Stars)

When I was nearing the end of the countdown of my top 100 films, somewhere in the top 10, one of my friends said, "I suppose your favourite film is Shawshank Redemption". I didn't reply, I just told him to wait and see. As you can see, it isn't my top film, and it isn't even in my top 100.

I know that it's a very popular film. In all time top films lists the top film is either "Citizen Kane", "The Godfather" or "Shawshank Redemption". None of the three films have made it into my top 100. I don't think the same as everyone else. I don't agree with other film fans, and I definitely don't agree with film critics.

Today is the first time I've watched "Shawshank Redemption" for a long, long time. As far as I remember, I'd only watched it once before, some time between 2001 and 2010. I could hardly remember it, except that I liked it less than Frank Darabont's other films.

The film tells the story of two men who meet in Shawshank Prison, a fictional prison located in Maine. The year is 1947. Andy Dufresne is a banker who's sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his wife and her lover. He claims to be innocent, but the evidence is stacked against him, because he intended to kill them, but changed his mind at the last minute. Ellis Redding, nicknamed Red, has already served 20 years of a life sentence for murder. The two men become friends, and we see their friendship deepen over the next 20 years.

It's a tough prison. It's a brutal prison. On Andy's first day in prison another new prisoner is beaten to death because he won't stop crying. Maybe he was the lucky one.

I can understand why the film is so popular, so I'll just tell you why I don't rate it as highly as others. The film is very slow moving. There's not much action. It takes us a long time, more than half of the film, to get inside Andy's head. It's supposed to be an uplifting feel-good film, but there's so much suffering along the way that we don't know if we'll ever reach a happy ending.

That doesn't mean I don't like the film. Four stars isn't a bad rating. It just doesn't draw me in enough to say, "Wow! I need to watch it again next week!"

Success Rate:  + 0.9

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