Part of Weekend Classics
Internationally acclaimed actors Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman star in a compelling drama of hope, friendship and atonement behind the walls of a maximum security prison. From a novella by best-selling author Stephen King comes a poignant tale of the human spirit. Red (Freeman), serving a life sentence, and Andy Dufresne (Robbins), a mild-mannered banker wrongly convicted of murder, forge an unlikely bond that will span more than twenty years. Together they discover hope as the ultimate means of survival. Under horrifying conditions and the ever-present threat of violence, two lifers reclaim their souls and find freedom within their hearts in The Shawshank Redemption. Based on the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.
“There are standard ways to stage a prison film and standard ways to tell a story by Stephen King. But THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, based on a King novella and set in the correctional institution of the title, succeeds in avoiding the familiar. Without a single riot scene or horrific effect, it tells a slow, gentle story of camaraderie and growth, with an ending that abruptly finds poetic justice in what has come before.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times (Sep 23, 1994)
“This is not a ‘prison drama’ in any conventional sense of the word. It is not about violence, riots or melodrama. The word ‘redemption’ is in the title for a reason…. Mostly the film is an allegory about holding onto a sense of personal worth, despite everything. If the film is perhaps a little slow in its middle passages, maybe that is part of the idea, too, to give us a sense of the leaden passage of time, before the glory of the final redemption.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Sep 23, 1994)
