Before watching this movie, I'd seen The Shawshank Redemption in the five-dollar movie bin at Wal-Mart at least a dozen times. I'm not sure why I never bothered to pick it up before seeing it on this list, after all, Morgan Freeman is on the cover and that should have been enough for me. I happened to be browsing Netflix on my Wii with my father when we passed it and he nearly had a heart attack. "Watch it." he says. "It'll change your life." So I did.
The Shawshank Redemption, as anyone who is reading this blog probably already knows, is about a man who is sent to jail for a crime he did not commit (surprised?). He is raped, taunted, beaten and humiliated, just as any beta-white male in a prison movie should be. He's quiet and uninteresting; fades into the background except for those occasional moments when he pops up to ask for something obscure, like a tool for carving rocks. He is, for lack of better words, pathetic, but who wouldn't be if they were in prison for a crime they didn't commit.
He does manage to capture the interest of Red (Morgan Freeman), an inmate that has been behind bars for an insurmountable sentence. He assists Andy with getting the rock carving tool, and they forge a sort of friendship that involves keeping each other relatively sane throughout the turmoil that they live in.
In one bold and sweeping gesture, Andy (sad, pathetic guy) takes the movie from teetering on just-another-prison-movie-mediocrity to slightly more interesting prison movie mediocrity when he risks his own life to help a prison guard save money on his taxes (God bless him). His popularity grows and before you know it, hes at the top of the prison hierarchy. The thing that sets Andy apart from every OTHER main character in a prison movie is the fact that he is widely liked by, not just a large percentage of the prisoners, but also the guards/warden, ect. That is a luxury that most prison movie main characters do not get to enjoy.
Years, and years go by. The warden is an asshole. Red is becoming institutionalized. Andy seems to be losing his mind. I honestly thought he was going to kill himself for a moment. To say that I didn't see the prison break coming would be an understatement. It shocked the hell out of me, and I stared at the TV with my mouth gaping wide open as he crawled through that prison sewage to freedom, to the pacific ocean, to his boat, to his bed and breakfast, to his life. It was a a glorious moment, that, even weeks after watching it, I can still picture in my mind as vividly as if I'd watched it yesterday. Red leaving prison (finally) was the icing on top of a perfect ending. The Shawshank Redemption is definitely an eight to nine-ish movie.
