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Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
- blinding-streak 8mo agoVery strange that the cast list on this web page doesn't include Morgan Freeman.
- socalgal2 8mo agothis type of thing happens quite often. I can only guess that part of the page is automated or farmed out because I see it all the time, main actors not credited when the list is 4-6 people.
- tetris11 8mo agoThey're planning to digitally replace him in a later HD-DVD release with Dave Chapelle. None of this is true.
- RupertSalt 8mo agoHe was actually replaced by Nelson Mandela
- TonyStr 8mo ago> [...]and the redemption, when it comes, is Red’s. (spoilers) It never sat right with me that Andy is shown to be innocent, and some viciously evil irrelevant character did it instead. This, I thought, takes away the whole redemption aspect of the movie, turning Andy into an innocent Mary Sue. I'd never considered that it may be more about Red's character instead. Though I didn't catch a satisfying explanation for that idea in the review, and it's been a long time since I watched the move. I think I'll rewatch it today.
- spiderfarmer 8mo agoIt was my first movie about prison life in the US and the failures of the American justice and correctional system. I since learned it was realistic in every aspect apart from the escape, and that not much has changed since. Everything about it is depressing and somehow it’s the best movie ever.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoYes, it was a bit too uncomplicated to me and smacks of "Oscar Bait."
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 8mo agoAndy has to be innocent for his escape (and bringing down of the warden) to be a redemption. It's a redemption of his life against the injustice he was subjected to, not a redemption of his soul for some evil that he committed. If he was a double murderer, plotting to and successfully escaping isn't a redemption, it's just a murderer getting away with it.
- RunSet 8mo agoCool Hand Luke, which I prefer, has its protagonist sentenced to a work camp for an absurd crime. A more recent prison movie which made me feel similarly to Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank Redemption while watching it is "I Love You Phillip Morris" (starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor).
- TonyStr 8mo agoI rewatched the movie now, and I think you're right. There were a lot of details I'd forgotten. The way I remember thinking about it was that he was jailed for revenge murder, then spent his life in jail doing his best to atone by being helpful (building a library, teaching, helping with taxes, etc.). When the prison system refuses to set him free despite him proving through his actions in prison that he's not a threat to society anymore (I hallucinated this part -- this happened to Red, not Andy), he escapes, and his freedom is his redemption. I'm not a native English speaker, and I think I may have conflated redemption and atonement. Looking at some definitions, it looks like you can receive redemption without atonement -- it doesn't necessarily have to come from within.
- BenzeneDream 8mo agoI created this account just to say this was one of the most thoughtful and well-written replies I've ever come across on the internet.
- pyuser583 8mo agoYou’ve correctly hit the atonement v redemption distinction! That’s something few English speakers could do!
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- twoodfin 8mo agoAndy is by no means innocent, he’s just not guilty of any crime he should have been imprisoned in Shawshank for. The guy who sits drunk in his car eyeing a revolver is not a Mary Sue. And his demeanor of resignation at Shawshank suggests he doesn’t consider himself just an unlucky victim of blind fate & a golf pro.
- Thorrez 8mo ago(1999) (The movie is from 1994, the review is from 1999.)
- gabrielsroka 8mo agoHe also reviewed it in 1994 but only gave it three and a half stars https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-shawshank-redemption-1994 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-shawshank-redemption-...
- decimalenough 8mo agoQuite a few classics like this and "Office Space" were box office flops that were resurrected by the magic of VHS/DVD. Yet those are gone too. Is there any room left for the "sleeper hit" in 2026?
- troupo 8mo agoThere's no space left for actual hits. Movies aren't even given proper theatrical releases. One week at the theater then straight to streaming, or even simultaneous theater and streaming releases.
- slumberlust 8mo agoAre you implying that movie theaters are a better experience than home theaters? I'd argue movie theaters dug their own graves with greed shovels.
- troupo 8mo ago> Are you implying that movie theaters are a better experience than home theaters? I don't have an IMAX screen at home. I don't even have the smallest theater screen at home. Oh, and that "home theater"? Good luck getting the advertised 4k on it from any streaming platform, and very few will have a handy BluRay/Torrents set up at home. Neither do I have Dolby surround at home. Or a way to make the room fully dark. > I'd argue movie theaters dug their own graves with greed shovels. I seriously doubt that. Covid maimed theaters, and then streaming dealt the killing blow.
- watwut 8mo agoStreaming killed theater because experience of streaming is just overall better then experience of going to the theater. There I said it. I have noise control. I can pause it. If I am watching alone I can rewind a scene. I watch when I want and I dont have to go to the mall for it. And it is massively cheaper. If more of us watch, we can talk to esch other or comment things. Or be silent and not disturbed by somebody else making noise.
- tkocmathla 8mo ago> There’s a feeling in Hollywood that audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with fresh novelties. I think such movies are slower to sit through than a film like “Shawshank,” which absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film. This resonates with me and is a really concise way to explain why, to me, a 2 to 2.5 hour long Marvel or Transformers movie feels like an eternity, while a movie like Shawshank never has me checking my watch.
- jcynix 8mo agoGhibli movies are a different class of movies, but the exact thing that you describe "absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film" is what happends to me. The story is so intriguing that I even "forget" that I'm watching a painted movie.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoSpirited Away contains an accurate review of itself in the title!
- canadiantim 8mo agoI like the use of happends in this context, a good mixture of tenses
- tootie 8mo agoKurosawa did this better than anyone. He could make you sit through 2.5 hours of grinding drama and make it feel like barely 5 minutes have passed. Ran (1985) was like that.
- illwrks 8mo agoI think a part of it is down to demographics with disposable income. Teenagers have a taste of freedom and some pocket money and the next gimmick films is a good way to spend it. It's the same as they mature into 20 somethings. In their 30's they may be more career focused and have less time, a good chunk of them will tire of novelty and move towards more interesting/arthouse films. When kids come into the picture there's even less time and money so things change again, then the cycle repeats. So, at least from my opinion, "new" will always be a good sales tactic to catch attention.
- smurda 8mo agoThis is one of my favorite movies, yet it won 0 Oscars (nominated for 7) and was a box office flop (cost $25M to make and box office proceeds were $28M). It only gained popularity after the theatres from the VHS rental market. I firmly believe part of the initial commercial failure was because of the title. With something more descriptive like, "Escape from Shawshank" or just "Prison Break" people would have been more interested to see it.
- pavlov 8mo agoThe Finnish importer tried this. They decided to call the movie “Rita Hayworth – avain pakoon”. It means “Key to the escape”… These people would have presumably called Planet of the Apes “Distant future in Eastern United States”…
- nntwozz 8mo agoOn a tangent the movie Cold Mountain (2003) was translated to "Åter till Cold Mountain" in Swedish. Now you may ask, where is the actual translation? They just added Swedish words to the original title (which just means back to Cold Mountain". Who are these people and how do I apply for a job? It seems like a perfect workplace.
- crossroadsguy 8mo agoIt meant “back to cold mountain”, or you meant the meaning just rolled back to being “cold mountain”?
- nntwozz 8mo agoTranslation added "back to" to the original title Cold Mountain. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- georgecmu 8mo agoThe translations of the title (Finnish, Greek, others?) referencing Rita Hayworth make more sense if you know the title of Stephen King's novella the movie was based on (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption).
- karim79 8mo ago"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is one of my favourite Stephen King short stories (From "Different Seasons"). I actually read it after watching the film (which is just amazing) and still ended up liking the short story more than the film. I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.
- lemonberry 8mo ago"Stand by Me" was based on "The Body" from that same book. Great collection.
- riffraff 8mo ago"Apt Pupil" was also adapted as a movie tho not as good as the other two, imvho.
- SigmundA 8mo agoFun fact Apt pupil has a reference to Shawshank where the main character says he lives off stocks that a banker setup named Dufresne who went to prison for murdering his wife. King does this all the time in his stories having character connections across different novels, making them set in the same universe. Fun, adds some depth to all of it. Like Randal Flagg being the same villain in the Stand and the Dark tower and Eyes of the Dragon.
- simianwords 8mo agoWhat’s an equivalent movie in contemporary times? Not pretentious, sincere and relies on dialogue and story telling? I kind of hated movies like Manchester By The Sea, American Sniper, Banshees of Insherin. They all feel not so sincere to me. There’s something about them - a technique where audience exposition is deliberately toned down to such an extent that it’s just scene after scene with no soul.
- pavlov 8mo ago“Sincere” and “authentic” are very much taste factors calibrated by whatever was the media environment when you were growing up. Most people think the best year in pop music history was the one when they were 12. There’s a similar effect about the good old movies.
- simianwords 8mo agoI was afraid I was committing the same mistake. Am I just used to the older type of movies? It could be possible.
- fatherwavelet 8mo agoIt is an objective fact though that the lack of DVD sales on the backend has completely changed the economics of movies and what gets made. You also can't really compare the 90s to now when music and the movies were the dominate art form and there was no way to get rich and famous from just the internet. I watched an interview with Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains and he said in the late 80s Seatle, he worked at a giant 50 room rehearsal space, almost apartment complex, that was opened 24/7. Music can't be the same as a time when being in a band was so popular that the economics could support a 50 band room rehearsal space that never closes. It is night and day different to now. Same with movies.
- bji9jhff 8mo agoWho is the new Stephen King? I suppose answering my question will automatically also give an answer to yours.
- simianwords 8mo agoIn my opinion, the costs to make movies have gone down so much that you will find sincerity not only in high production value releases but also in YouTube and vlogs.
- dylan604 8mo agoIt’s not the cost of movies going down as budgets keep going up. It is the cost of consumer video equipment that has lowered the bar to entry for production. Video equipment never looked as good a film until digital sensors and high speed storage. Not having a delay of getting film exposed and being able to see playback immediately after stopping the camera also lowers expenses.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- jcynix 8mo agoIt's a fine movie, agreed. The movie's focus isn't on revenge, but on the interaction between the protagonists. Anyways, the story outline heavily reminds me of the classic "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas. Disclaimer: I never read Stephen King's original short story, on which the movie is based, so I cannot say how this compares to Dumas' classic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
- dylan604 8mo agoThere’s a scene in the movie directly acknowledging this when they are sorting the books for the expanded library. Heywood calls it the Count of Monte Crisco by Alexandree Dumbass and Andy says it’s about a prison break. Heywood then suggests it should go in the educational section.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoAre there any new Eberts? The review landscape feels like it still hasn't exited his shadow but needs to evolve.
- jacquesm 8mo agoYou'll never know because there aren't that many good films to review.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoAs of when? It's not likely to be like the 70s again, but it wasn't for the majority of his career.
- jacquesm 8mo agoI don't know as of when. But I have no problem listing one movie after another for the 70's, 80's, 70's, 200x but since then it's been longer and longer between movies that stand out. Oppenheimer and 'Don't look up' are the exceptions. Everything everywhere all at once was mentioned here but I found it pretty thin and predictable.
- mcphage 8mo ago> I found it pretty thin and predictable I am amazed by your prediction abilities, then. I don't think I predicted any of it.
- ted_bunny 8mo agoThe only thing I predicted was that I was not going to finish it.
- padjo 8mo agoThis pattern is repeated down through the entire history of film. The problem isn't the films its you getting older.
- plasma_beam 8mo agoThis generation will never experience the joy of flipping on network tv on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, seeing Shawshank on, sitting down and just watching it, even though you’ve seen it countless times and it’s the tv-edited commercial filled version.
- draw_down 8mo ago[dead]
- netsharc 8mo agoI lived in Germany, and movies are dubbed there, so the TV stayed mostly off. I did turn on the TV once. There was a movie that looked half interesting, so I focused on it. The scene was two guys at the airport to pick up a girl who they had a crush on in highschool. They're waiting for her at the arrivals. "There she is!", cut to... not the girl walking in looking all glorius, but a beer ad. I turned it off and looked for the movie on Torrent.
- svag 8mo agoI recently saw it as a play in a theater, and although I had my reservations regarding this, the result was an interesting experience. The minimalist staging shifted the focus to the performances and the emotional weight of the story, highlighting the quiet persistence of hope. The title of the play also differed from the movie, Rita Hayworth: Last Exit, which feels somewhat like a spoiler. I believe this was the title used by the Greek distributor.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- cainxinth 8mo agoI feel that anyone that has ever suffered an injustice (and who hasn’t at some time or another) can relate to this film. And survivors of all kinds can understand what it means to “crawl through a river of shit” to earn their reprieve.
- andyjohnson0 8mo agoCoincidentally there is an interview with Roger Deakins, who did the cinematography on Shawshank, as well as many other excellent films, in The Guardian today. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/08/roger-deakins-cinematographer-interview-coen-brothers-mendes-scorsese-memoir-reflections-on-cinematography https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/08/roger-deakins-c...
- pentagrama 8mo agoA great complement to that article is the Team Deakins podcast, where Roger Deakins and James Deakins talk about cinematography, filmmaking and the business of film. https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/ https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/
- mmooss 8mo ago> It is a strange comment to make about a film set inside a prison, but “The Shawshank Redemption” creates a warm hold on our feelings because it makes us a member of a family. Many movies offer us vicarious experiences and quick, superficial emotions. “Shawshank” slows down and looks. It uses the narrator’s calm, observant voice to include us in the story of men who have formed a community behind bars. It is deeper than most films; about continuity in a lifetime, based on friendship and hope. I think Ebert is a brilliant reviewer; here I think something is overlooked: I agree about the emotional tone but not about the effect or the truth behind it. The prison is a fearful, traumatic place, of rape you can't stop, where life hangs by a thread, you take risks (for example with the bookkeeping) living on a razor's edge. The constant danger hangs over everything - you might not survive the day, you might be assaulted again, today might be the day they look more closely at what you're doing and you're caught. That belies the calm narration and friendship. They provide an island of hope and love amid the trauma, in stark contrast to it, in constant tension with it. You might say the narration is a device to make it palatable to middle-class audiences. That's something I notice a lot in Hollywood. First, the protagonist is someone they can identify with - a banker, a middle-class job - wrongly convicted, in this horrible situation. They are not, for example, a homeless person or someone semi-employed doing manual labor (someone much more likely to be wrongly convicted) - that would be a different movie and much less empathetic for many viewers, though objectively exactly as horrible. Then you have this calm, warm, reasonable voice telling the story - not a voice of terror or hate or trauma; that would be too much; the voice says 'it's ok'. As Ebert says, > The movie avoids lingering on Andy’s suffering; after beatings, he’s seen in medium and long shot, tactfully. The camera doesn’t focus on Andy’s wounds or bruises, but, like his fellow prisoners, gives him his space. And I think also the following claim goes much too far: > His film grants itself a leisure that most films are afraid to risk. The movie is as deliberate, considered and thoughtful as Freeman’s narration. There’s a feeling in Hollywood that audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with fresh novelties. Sure, it's not the Avengers but it's a movie where the main plot elements are prison violence, a prison escape, and a grand con. This isn't Tokyo Story or In the Mood for Love.
- mcphage 8mo ago> First, the protagonist is someone they can identify with - a banker, a middle-class job - wrongly convicted, in this horrible situation. You're right that the protagonist is wrongly convicted, but the narrator of the movie was guilty of murder.
- malshe 8mo agoRoger Ebert writing style was so polished. I wish I could write like this. My writing tends to be quite dry to the extent that GPTzero flagged it as written by AI. The reason given was "the lack of a creative use of grammar." On a separate note, although vastly different, Fight Club was also not very successful on the box office (domestically made losses) but became a hit on DVDs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club)
- austinjp 8mo agoSometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like this film.
- tptacek 8mo agoYou may very well be! Why?
- kgwxd 8mo agoIt's good for a single watch. I don't get how people can rewatch it without groaning non-stop. We get it, he's smarter than the warden and the warden hates him for it, prison sucks, and Morgan Freeman can make even the lamest cliches sound "deep".
- tptacek 8mo agoThe warden does not hate him for being smarter than him? The warden covets him for being smarter than him!
- austinjp 8mo ago@padjo said it well. Schmaltzy and manipulative. Freeman's folksiness is eye-rollingly clichéd. I cringed throughout the film the first time I tried to watch it, and I haven't lasted more than a few minutes every other time I've tried. I am very well aware I'm in a minority, though!
- padjo 8mo agoYou're not alone. I find it pretty dull, manipulative and schmaltzy. This is the great thing about art, there's no objective measurement, people are free to disagree and like what they like.
- hackeraccount 8mo agoI like it but it's not amazing. And I've seen it ... 4 or 5 or more times. It's just such an easy watch. I think the deal is that the emotional beats in it work so well that the plot can be set aside. It's also not a problem that those beast aren't particularly clever or imaginative. It's like a jump scare in a horror movie or Old Yeller. Even when you know what's going to happen you still startle or shed a tear. Honestly even when you know you're being manipulated and think it's cheesy you still get that response. The weird thing to me about Shawshank is that it's not a monster out of the dark or a dog getting killed. It's not a cathartic thing but something else.
- xrd 8mo agoIf you go to Ebert's wikipedia, you can almost miss the link to the screenplay he wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Valley_of_the_Dolls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Valley_of_the_Dolls This was co-produced with Russ Meyer, who basically made a bunch films which are as close to porn as you can get without being technically porn. He also made a ton of porn films as well. I haven't seen any of them, but many are now cult films. It feels debatable that he intended these to become cultural relics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer I was surprised to see Roger Ebert was involved in that film! Gene Siskel, his long time partner, rated Valley of the Dolls 0 out of 4 stars, which is funny.
- StoneAndSky 8mo agoIn 1995, our art teacher used a full week of class time to screen this for us, for no other reason than she felt it was an incredible film that deserved a wider audience. She was right.
- toomanyrichies 8mo agoRoger Ebert was a national treasure. The saga of his review of director Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" [1] always makes me laugh: > American critic Roger Ebert has hit back at Vincent Gallo in the latest round of a public spat over whether the actor-director did or did not apologise for his derided Cannes contender The Brown Bunny. Earlier this week Gallo denied having apologised and claimed the critic was "a fat pig" for saying that he had. He added: "The only thing I'm sorry for is putting a curse of Roger Ebert's colon." > Yesterday, in his column for the Chicago Sun Times, Ebert stuck to his guns - quoting the editor of trade magazine Screen International, who says that they have Gallo's apology on tape. On the question of his cursed colon, Ebert said: "I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny." > The critic rounded off his article (as it were) by casually conceding that he is overweight. "It is true that I am fat," Ebert wrote. "But one day I shall be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny." Later on, Gallo went back to the editing room and cut a quarter of the film. Ebert re-watched it and actually ended up giving it a thumbs' up. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/jun/05/news2 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/jun/05/news2
- duxup 8mo agoI miss reading Roger, reading his reviews and writing was one of my favorite things to do.
- casey2 8mo agohttps://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-shawshank-redemption-1994 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-shawshank-redemption-... Roger Ebert is way to "fake" for my taste but broken clock and all that.