Retrospective Film Review

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) • 30 Years Later — one of the best films ever made

A banker convicted of murdering his wife forms a friendship over a quarter century with a hardened convict, while maintaining his innocence…

Bad luck is said to float around. Occasionally, it lands on people, the incorporeal hand of fate arbitrarily selecting hapless souls to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sometimes, the storm you find yourself in passes quickly. But there are those times when it seems as though you will spend the rest of your sorry days in ceaseless night, a pitch-black darkness, without even a glimmer of salvation. In such scenarios, how can we keep from despairing?

Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) knew how. Even though he’s expected to spend his whole life in the penitentiary, serving two consecutive life sentences for a crime he claims he didn’t commit, he walks around like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Red (Morgan Freeman) is bemused by his mentality: doesn’t the man know there’s no way out?