MODERN FILM CLASSICS #2

The Shawshank Redemption
Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman), and Best Director

The 1994 movie that is now a cult hit, and considered one of the best films of all time (look at the Internet Movie Database and it is ranked up with Citizen Kane), was suprisingly a flub at the box office. Tim Robbins stars as Andy Dufresne, a banker convicted of killing his wife and her lover, when he caught her in bed with another man. He is sentenced to life at Shawshank Prison. There the tall stranger, makes friends with the inmates and the guards. His insistence in his innocence is something that suprises even his best friend, played at his best by Morgan Freeman, who plays Red. Red is a lifer, in Shawshank, he is someone who can get what you need from the outside world. And what Andy wants is a rockhammer (for his immense interest in rocks) and a Rita Hayworth poster. Therefore setting up what is probably the most amazing story ever adapted onto the screen from a short story, Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

So can director Frank Darabont, ever outdo this classic. Well he is trying with another King adaption, this time of The Green Mile, which by all standards looks to be another prison classic. But The Shawshank Redemption, will probably always be regarded as Darabont's best work ever, his amazing lens caught a picture that in all aspects, is the closest thing to a modern classic. He realizes what he has is spectacular and moves forward with it. Sitting through it, you don't even realize that you are watching close to a three hour film. The cast brings it all together, from Robbins and Freeman, to James Whitmore as a caring con, so used to life inside these walls, that it's his way of life, to Clancy Brown, as the sadistic guard, who beats a cowardly convict to death with his nightstick.
This is the closest you will get to moviemaking at it's best.

More Modern Film Classics Available:
Bram Stoker's Dracula