Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Shawshank Redemption - movie review

After few months, I have watched a movie for once. I like watching movies, but I like books, anime and manga more, so movies get their turn mostly when I'm at someone's house. "The Shawshank Redemption" is a movie that I planned to watch for a long time. I'm not sure is this a world-wide opinion, but this movies has something like a cult-movie status in my country, at least among people of my generation (20-30). Since I somehow missed it on TV in all these years (and it was broadcasted quite often), I already got a "You didn't watch it?!?!?" reaction few times. So I decided to rectify it.

There were some facts that I knew about the movie beforehand: that it was based on a novel by Stephen King and that it's taking place in a prison. So I expected something in line with "The Green Mile": a group of people in prison, brought together by some character with mystic powers.

After watching it, I see that I was half right. This is a movie about the two decades of life in a prison. Main character is Andrew Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), a young and successful banker sentenced for life in the prison for double murder of his wife and her lover. In the prison, he befriends Red (played by Morgan Freeman) and some other inmates. He has it tough in the beginning, but he is an intelligent and stubborn person so he is able to overcome it. Later, using his knack for making money, he is able to ensure a better life for himself and his friends. Ending was really surprising for me.

It is a very good movie, but I didn't find it as great as I expected. There were few very touching moments in the movie and I rooted for main characters during the whole movie, but it's not a movie to left me wondering and contemplating about it for days after watching. If I watched this 10 or 15 years ago, I presume I would be much more impressed. However, I already watched "The Green Mile" and "The Last Castle", so, for me, this is just another movie about man in prison, making friends there. It is still a good movie, with good characters, capable of surprising with some unexpected plot twist.



I've been reading "20th Century Boys" manga for last week or so. I have one more volume to read, so I will be posting a review about it very soon.

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