Classic Write-Up: The Shawshank Redemption Review

Simply trying to put an exact number on the amount of great things The LEGO Movie accomplishes would be a fools errand. For you see, there are so many contained within that film, trying to name every single one would take an eternity. However, one I do want to point out is how wonderfully it parodies, yet reveres Morgan Freeman. While they use his distinct vocals to deliver deliciously silly lines, he always manages to show just how adept he is in the craft of acting, that even his most humorous scenes still remain plenty of gravitas.

Thanks to his talent, he's been nominated for an Academy Award in Acting (either in Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor) five times. One of his most well known award nominated turns was in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption (which is based on the book written by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King), a movie held in high stature by many, to the point where it's the #1 movie on IMDB's Top 250 Movies list. High praise, but I've long found IMDB as a whole, namely that Top 250 List, to be far from the perfect measure of a films quality. Sitting down to watch it for the first time, I went in with minimal preconceptions and expectations and left feeling like I'd watched a good movie, but one that has plenty of underwhelming aspects.

Now, the trouble of the movie mainly lies in Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), the protagonist of the film. Andy is really a very boring person, with is inability to express much emotion in the start of the story not only keeping him alive in prison, but also distancing himself from me, the viewer. I found it extremely difficult to latch onto a dude whose just not interesting on a visual nor personality level. It's not helpful that he spends the majority of the movie with Red, played beautifully by Morgan Freeman. Freeman narrates much of the film, and the words he speaks have a sort of eloquence on their own. Adding in Freemans voice to bring them to life just makes them pop like few things else in the movie do, especially towards the end where more hope can be found in every word Freeman speaks.

But like I said, the depth Freeman conveys in a few sentences just shows how lacking Dufresne is. Red may be narrating the adventure, but this is Dufresnes journey, no question about that. Triumphs that Dufrense achieves should come across as moments of true joy instead occur without much fanfare from me. However, there is one sequence that stands out to me as the films only true moment of greatness, and believe me, it is the very definition of that word. It's a seemingly simple montage depicting prison librarian Brooks, and his failure to adjust to society after being released from prison. As he his voice reads aloud a letter he sent to his pals back in Shawshank, we see his struggles, his fear at a world that changed while he was locked up. The final shot in this montage is this glorious mixture of haunting and tragic. A powerful sequence, but it does cast a large shadow over the rest of the movie that it can't get out from. There's nothing in here that even comes close to this, not even Freemans masterful narration.

At least the ending, which has a lack of Andy Dufresne for reasons I'm sure you can surmise due to the numerous times the film has been parodied or alluded to, has some great moments involving the antagonistic warden. And even the films weakest moments are still gorgeous, thanks to Roger Deakins handling the cinematography on this one. The dudes terrific in that department, and it's been a real pleasure to see his work in the numerous older films I've watched recently. Still, I wish the film as a whole was more consistent in quality. Freeman, Deakins and the montage involving Brooks are among the movies more notable spectacular elements, but the lack of any sort of interesting aspects in our main protagonist is a major problem that drags the film down considerably.