The Shawshank Redemption

In 1946 a young New England banker, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and sentenced to life at the Shawshank State Prison — twice over. Quiet and introspective, he gradually strikes up a friendship with the prison ’fixer’, Red (Morgan Freeman), and over the next two decades wins the trust of the governor and guards, but in his heart, he still yearns for freedom.

Even thirty years ago when it was released, Frank Darabont’s adaptation of a Stephen King novella was seen as a throwback to the kind of serious, literate drama Hollywood used to make back in the day. He himself considered it a “tall tale” in the spirit of one his favourite filmmakers, Frank Capra. Here is a first-time director with evident respect for the intelligence of his audience, brave enough to let character details accumulate without recourse to the fast-forward button. Darabont plays the long game and wins: this is an engrossing, superbly acted yarn, and while the movie wasn’t a blockbuster hit on release, its fan base grew and grew, to the point where it is now regarded as one of the finest films of the 90s and a firm favourite for many.

When I first saw it, I realized he’d made not just one of the best movies ever done from my work, but a potential movie classic. That turned out to be the case.

Stephen King

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