I have seen this movie before. This is good because it implies that I'm not a total failure when it comes to movies. Having actually watched what is generally considered the best movie of all time says at least something about my movie knowledge.
Having said that, its not the movie i would have thought should be up there. Sure, it's brilliant, but it just isn't the first thing that pops into my head when someone says "all time great movies". The movie, in my head is on par with "The Green Mile" (placed at #074), which is another fantastic movie about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder. The main difference I suppose is that The Shawshank Redemption is more "real". Both state prisons and death row prisons exist of course, but the Green Mile contains an element of the supernatural, which I guess makes the story in the Shawshank Redemption slightly easier to empathise with.
I have seen it, but not recently, so I decided I'd re-watch it before posting this. I had forgotten that although the main character was technically Andy (Tim Robbins), the story was told from the perspective of Red (Morgan Freeman). This of course makes complete sense due to Morgan Freeman's excellent narrating voice. He plays a bit of a more shady character here than I'm used to. This is probably because, every time I think of Morgan Freeman, I just think of "God", from "Bruce Almighty", arguably the least shady character imaginable. But he plays the character brilliantly, so I'm not complaining.
I seem to remember it slightly differently. I thought he broke out slightly earlier in the film and he spent time trying to prove that he was innocent, but I'm probably confusing it with another film. Perhaps "The Fugitive".
My thoughts are...It's awesome...still. Prisons these days probably aren't run as violently and strictly as they were back then, but then again how would I know? I've never been. It certainly seemed accurate enough though, displaying that terrifying "mob-mentality" that I can only imagine is worst amongst prisoners, especially when treated disrespectfully.
My only problem is that I wasn't sure why the warden had Tommy shot. Something to do with him fearing that information would get out, but I'm not sure what. I'm also not sure how it wasn't found out that he did it sooner.
Perhaps I can use this blog as a method of asking questions about movies I don't undertand. While we're at it, why is it called "The Shawshank Redemption?"
No comments:
Post a Comment