The Shawshank Redemption

In 1946, a banker named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of a double murder, even though he stubbornly proclaims his innocence. He's sentenced to a life term at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine, where another lifer, Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), picks him as the new recruit most ...more

Adapted from a Stephen King novella, The Shawshank Redemption takes a prison drama and twists it into a fascinating existential treatise on how to approach the business of day-to-day life in the face of a desperately Sisyphian reality. As the film's signature line suggests, "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'." Filmed on location in an Ohio prison, the film occasionally lapses into familiar formulas and well-known stereotypes of the prison-drama genre, but overcomes them due in no small part to a ...more