The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is a American prison drama film, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins as Andrew "Andy" Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding.

The film portrays Andy spending nearly two decades in Shawshank State Prison, a fictional penitentiary in Maine, and his friendship with Red, a fellow inmate. This movie exemplifies the potential gap between initial box office success and ultimate popularity. Despite a lukewarm box office reception that was barely enough to cover its budget, The Shawshank Redemption received favorable reviews from critics and has since enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home videotape, DVD and Blu-ray. It continues to be hailed by critics and audiences alike, 15 years after its initial release, and is ranked among the greatest films of all time.

Plot
In 1947, a banker named Andrew "Andy" Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover based on strong circumstantial evidence and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine. At the prison, inmate Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) is rejected for parole after having served twenty years of his life sentence shortly before Andy's arrival. Andy gradually becomes acquainted with Red's circle of friends, and Red himself, who is known for cleverly smuggling in contraband. After a month of adjusting to his new life, Andy approaches Red and asks him to get a rock hammer, intending to pursue a hobby of rock collecting. Red supplies the hammer for ten dollars, and later fulfills Andy's request for a poster of Rita Hayworth.

One day in 1949, while tarring the roof of Shawshank's license plate factory, Andy overhears the captain of the prison guards, Captain Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), bitterly complaining about the taxes he will have to pay on a forthcoming inheritance. Andy approaches Hadley with a solution that will allow him to keep the entire inheritance tax-free; though Hadley nearly throws Andy off the roof initially, Andy's willingness to set up the transaction for the cost of beer for the tarring crew wins Hadley's respect. Prior to this, Andy had frequently been beaten and sexually assaulted by a gang called "The Sisters", led by inmates Bogs (Mark Rolston) and Rooster (Gary Lee Davis). After a particularly vicious beating at the hands of the Sisters lands Andy in the infirmary, Bogs returns to his cell from a week in solitary confinement to find Captain Hadley there. Hadley inflicts a brutal nightstick beating on Bogs, which leaves him paralyzed. Bogs is sent away to a state hospital, and the message to the Sisters is clear: Andy is never bothered again.

As other guards begin to come to him for financial help, Andy is given a makeshift office in the prison library to provide tax and financial services. His "clientele" grows to include the entire prison staff, guards from other prisons, and even Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) himself. To keep Andy happy, the Warden provides him with a single cell and allows him to keep an unusual amount of contraband in his cell. Conspicuous amongst the contraband are Andy's posters of "fantasy girlies" - first Rita Hayworth, followed over time by Marilyn Monroe and then Raquel Welch. The Warden also permits Andy's letter-writing campaign on behalf of the prison library. Through Andy's budgeting and purchasing activities, the library is expanded and remodeled into the "best prison library in New England". The Warden capitalizes on Andy's skills and devises a program to put prison inmates to work for local construction projects, exploiting the prisoners' free labor for his own personal profit, with Andy acting behind the scenes as a money launderer. Andy uses his knowledge of "the system" to create the false identity of Randall Stephens, which he uses as a straw man to hide the Warden's involvement.

In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows) enters Shawshank on a breaking and entering charge, and quickly becomes part of Red's and Andy's group of friends, with Andy helping him to pass the GED test. He learns of Andy's supposed crime and makes a shocking revelation: Elmo Blatch (Bill Bolender), one of his old cellmates, had gleefully described murdering two people who fit the description of Andy's wife and her lover, and how her "hotshot banker" husband got blamed for it. Andy hopes that he will be able to get a new trial with Tommy's help, and he approaches Warden Norton for advice and assistance. Fearing exposure of his illegal activities at Shawshank should Andy be set free, Norton sends him to solitary confinement and conspires to have Hadley shoot Tommy as an escapee. After Norton informs Andy of Tommy's death, Andy tries to refuse to launder any more funds for Norton. However, when Norton threatens Andy with the loss of his private cell, the loss of his protection against the "Sodomites", and the destruction of his beloved library (complete with a book burning), Andy relents, by all appearances a beaten man.

When Andy is back in the prison yard, he tells Red that if he ever gets out of prison he should go to a specific hayfield near Buxton, Maine to find something that has been buried under a volcanic rock. The following morning, Andy is missing from his cell. In a fury over Andy's disappearance, the Warden throws one of Andy's rocks at the poster of Raquel Welch - and is stunned to see the rock tear through the poster, revealing a large hole that Andy had used to escape. In a flashback sequence, it is revealed that Andy spent years chipping away at the wall of his cell with his rock hammer, using the posters of Hayworth, Monroe and Welch to conceal it. After his escape, Andy assumes the identity of Randall Stephens and uses it to withdraw Warden Norton's laundered money - $370,000 worth (over $2.4 million in 2009 dollars). Cashier's checks in hand, Andy sends evidence of Norton's activities to a Portland newspaper. The morning the story runs, Byron Hadley is arrested and Warden Norton commits suicide in his office.

The next year, 1967, Red is finally released on parole after serving 40 years at Shawshank. Red is afraid of "the outside", dreading living in fear, worried that he would end up committing suicide once outside of the prison's strict regime, as fellow prisoner Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) had done. Coincidentally, he's given the same room and the same job Hatlen had. But instead of committing suicide, Red recalls his promise to Andy and heads to the field in Buxton that Andy told him about. He finds a small metal box containing money and a letter from Andy. In the letter, Andy reminds Red of Zihuatanejo before ending with a final message: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". Red then violates his parole and travels to Mexico, eventually reuniting with Andy in Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast. Both of them are elated and hug each other when they meet.

Cast

 * Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne: The main character of the film. Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage and Charlie Sheen were each considered for the role when the script circulated Hollywood. Hanks turned it down due to commitments with Forrest Gump (which beat Shawshank at the Oscars), but he later worked with Darabont in The Green Mile. While studio favorites Cruise and Sheen were passed over for the part, Costner liked the script but turned it down due to filming of Waterworld, which was a move he later regretted.
 * Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding: The other main character and the film's narrator. Before Freeman was cast, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford were each considered for the role. Although written as a middle-aged Irishman with greying red hair (as in the original novella), Darabont cast Freeman for his authoritative presence and demeanor, because he could not see anyone else as Red.
 * Bob Gunton as Warden Samuel Norton: The head of Shawshank State Prison and the primary antagonist.
 * William Sadler as Heywood: One of Red's gang of long-sentence convicts. Sadler also appeared in a supporting role as Klaus Detterick in Darabont's adaptation of The Green Mile and as Jim Grondin in Darabont's adaptation of The Mist.
 * Clancy Brown as Capt. Byron Hadley: Chief of the guards at Shawshank and the other main antagonist. When cast, he declined the offer to study real life prison guards as preparation for his role, because he did not want to base it on any one person.
 * Gil Bellows as Tommy Williams: A young convict whose past experiences in prison hold the truth about Andy's innocence. Brad Pitt was considered at one point for the role.
 * Mark Rolston as Bogs Diamond: The head of "The Sisters" prison gang and a known rapist.
 * James Whitmore as Brooks Hatlen: The prison librarian/trustee and one of the oldest convicts at Shawshank. Darabont cast Whitmore as Brooks because he is one of his favorite character actors.

Jeffrey DeMunn appears during the film's opening credits in a cameo role as the 1946 DA, whose case causes Dufresne to be convicted. DeMunn, who is a Darabont alumnus, has also appeared in the director's later adaptations of The Green Mile and The Mist.

Production
Darabont secured the film adaptation rights from author Stephen King after impressing the author with his short film adaptation of "The Woman in the Room" in 1983. Although the two had become friends and maintained a pen-pal relationship, Darabont did not work with him until four years later in 1987, when he optioned to adapt Shawshank. This is one of the more famous Dollar Deals made by King with aspiring filmmakers. Darabont later directed The Green Mile, which was based on another work about a prison by Stephen King, and then followed that up with an adaptation of King's novella The Mist. Rob Reiner, who had previously adapted another King novella The Body into Stand By Me, offered $2.5 million in an attempt to write and direct the project. He aimed to cast Tom Cruise in the part of Andy and Harrison Ford as Red. Darabont seriously considered and liked Reiner's vision, but he ultimately decided it was his "chance to do something really great" by directing the film himself.

The Shawshank Redemption was filmed in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, located in north-central Ohio. The prison featured in the film is the old Ohio State Reformatory immediately north of downtown Mansfield. The Reformatory buildings have been used in several other films, including Harry and Walter Go to New York, Air Force One and Tango and Cash. Most of the prison yard has now been demolished to make room for expansion of the adjacent Richland Correctional Institute, but the Reformatory's Gothic Administration Building remains standing and, due to its prominent use in films, has become a tourist attraction. The real warden of the Richland Correctional Institute had a cameo appearance in Shawshank as the prisoner seated directly behind Tommy on his bus ride to prison and several other staff members from the nearby Mansfield Correctional Institution have small roles.

Several exterior scenes were shot at the Malabar Farm State Park, in nearby Lucas, Ohio. The sequence in which Andy is parked outside his home contemplating murdering his wife was filmed at the Pugh Cabin within the park. The sequences representing the village of Buxton and the field where Red finds Andy's hidden letter were filmed on private land located opposite the park entrance on Bromfield Road. The oak tree is clearly visible from the roadside. The adjacent rock wall, which was constructed specifically for the film, is located on the far side of the hill away from the roadside. The wall is still standing, although it has been somewhat eroded. Other scenes were shot in Ashland, Ohio, Butler, Ohio, Upper Sandusky, Ohio and Portland, Maine. The two scenes in Mexico were filmed on the Island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The first scene where Andy was driving a convertible on a road along the Pacific Coast with the top down is route 73 on the north side of St. Croix between Salt River (where Christopher Columbus landed in 1493) and Cane Bay. The second scene was the last scene of the movie. Red was walking on a beach toward his friend Andy while he worked on repairs to a boat on the beach. That was filmed at Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on the southwest point of St.Croix.

The photo of a young Red on his parole forms is that of Morgan Freeman's son, Alfonso. Alfonso is also seen in the yard when Andy's load of prisoners is first dropped off, shouting enthusiastically "Fresh Fish! Fresh Fish" whilst reeling in an imaginary line. Alfonso later played a parody of his father's character, Red, in a short spoof titled The Sharktank Redemption, available on the second disc of the 10th anniversary DVD.

The film ends with the prominent dedication "In Memory of Allen Greene". Darabont dedicated the film to his friend and agent, Allen Greene, who died just before the completion of the film due to complications from AIDS.

Interpretations
Roger Ebert suggests that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line, especially in prison, where integrity is lacking. Andy is an individual of integrity (here referring to adherence to a code of morality) among a host of criminals, and guards, with little integrity. Additionally, some critics have interpreted the film as a Christian parable due to its handling of hope, original sin, redemption, salvation, and faith in the afterlife. Some Christian reviewers have referred to it as a film "true to Christian principles." In the director's commentary track on the tenth anniversary DVD, Darabont denies any intent to create such a parable, and calls such interpretations of the film "fantastic." Others have also pointed out that the film's tidy dispatching of its principal antagonists - Hadley's tearful arrest, the Warden's suicide, and Bogs' paralysis - would seem to have more to do with Old Testament retribution than New Testament redemption. In addition, Andy's destruction of a Bible to enable his escape points toward a more pragmatic outlook.

Angus C. Larcombe suggests that the film provides a great illustration of how characters can be free, even in prison, or unfree, even in freedom, based on one's outlook in life.

Critical reception

 * In the 1994 Academy Awards the movie was nominated for seven awards (Best Picture, Best Actor– Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound) but, in the shadow of 1994's big winner Forrest Gump, did not win a single one.
 * In 1998 Shawshank was not listed in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, but nine years later (2007), it placed at the 72nd position on the revised list, outranking both Forrest Gump (76th) and Pulp Fiction (94th), the two most critically acclaimed movies from the year of Shawshank's release.
 * In 1999, film critic Roger Ebert listed Shawshank on his "Great Movies" list, and in reader polls by the film magazine Empire, the film ranked fifth in 2004, first in 2006 and fourth in 2008 on the lists for greatest movie of all time.
 * It is currently ranked No. 1 on IMDB's 250 Greatest Films of All Time.

Music
The score was composed by Thomas Newman, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994, marking his first Academy Award nomination. The majority of the score is comprised of dark piano music, which plays along the main character's role at Shawshank. Interestingly enough, the main theme ("End Titles" on the soundtrack album) is perhaps best known to modern audiences as the inspirational sounding music from many movie trailers dealing with inspirational, dramatic, or romantic films in much the same way that James Horner's driving music from the end of Aliens is used in many movie trailers for action films. A central scene in the film features the famous "Letter Duet" ("Canzonetta sull'aria") from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro.

Real life imitation
In 2007, Union County Prison inmates Jose Espinosa and Otis Blunt escaped the jail using similar techniques to those in the movie. The escape note left behind by the escapees led to the suicide of prison guard Rudolph Zurick. The escapees were later recaptured. Jose Espinosa denied responsibility over the death of Zurick.