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Shawshank Redemption . The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis "Red" Redding.

This movie is primarily about Andy Dufresne's life in prison after being convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his protests of innocence.

has repeatedly been voted as the second greatest movie ever made, according to the Internet Movie Database Rated over 170,000 times, it has the second most votes of any of the 250 movies on the IMDb list, and it is one of only two movies with at least a 9.0 average rating. This list is derived from the votes of IMDb registered users.

In the 1994 Academy Awards the movie was nominated for seven awards (Best Picture, Best Actor–Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound) but failed to win a single one.

Surprisingly, the film performed poorly in its theatrical run, but it is now one of the most famous examples of a film becoming a major success via the home video market. The poor box office performance was partially a result of competition from other films.

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The movie begins with Andy Dufresne being wrongly convicted, despite persistent pleas of innocence, for the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sent to the fictitious Shawshank Prison (the prison the movie was filmed in is the old, abandoned Ohio State Reformatory), to serve his sentence.

At the prison he befriends Red (Morgan Freeman), and several other prisoners (including Brooks Hatlen, James Whitmore). Andy is very soft spoken, and his steady voice and calm demeanor aid in the trust of men in the prison. His pre-prison, professional life as a banker, and his knowledge of accounting and income taxes earns him the trust of the captain of the guard, Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown), and eventually, the warden (Bob Gunton).

In prison, Andy endures injustice and mistreatment by the guards and repeated rapes at the hands of fellow prisoners. He decides that everyone in the prison needs to have some enjoyment in their life as he locks himself in the warden's office and blasts music over the loudspeakers to all of the prisoners. The calming effect of the music hits everyone except the warden who breaks into his office and places Andy in solitary confinement for two weeks. Andy's life in prison is brutal and unforgiving, but he takes each blow in stride because he has a brilliant plan brewing that no one knows about until the end of the film.

Brooks, meanwhile, is released from prison, but after spending over 50 years behind bars, the elderly convict finds that the normal world holds no place for him, and, in a letter to his friends at the prison, declares he's 'tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay.' He then hangs himself in his room.

Andy brings a sense of civility to his prison life through his hobby of working with rocks, treating others with civility, and continually defying authorities through simple acts of decency. Through his years and years of being confined in the prison Andy has been working every night on his escape. He chips away at the rock in his cell a little each night to form a tunnel that eventually leads to his freedom. On the night of his escape Andy crawls through a sewage pipe to come out clean on the other side of the prison. Being a free man he retrieves the money he has been collecting under a different name and escapes to Mexico.

Red, Andy's best friend in prison waits for his life sentence to be up. After Andy has gone, Red takes on Andy's "hopeful" spirit and decides to make the most of his life in and out of prison. Daring to refer to one of the members of the Parole Board as "sonny", Red learns something about himself and the world Andy had demonstrated through his stay at Shawshank — that there is a place inside yourself and outside the prison that isn't made of stone. There are things to hope for — things greater than prison will lead you to believe.

Nearing the end of the film, Red is released and finds himself going down the same path Brooks had taken years before; living in the same boarding house and working at the same job that Brooks worked before he commited suicide. It is a promise he made to Andy, however, that saves him from Brooks' fate. It is in this scene that Red understands a quote Andy muttered once in the prison yard, "Get busy living or get busy dying," to which Red responds, "That's damn right." Red decides to take his life into his own hands and for once live it to his own ability. He leaves Shawshank Prison an old man with only one thing left to hope for, freedom.

The movie ends with Red discovering a letter from Andy that leads him to Andy's location. He must cross the border into Mexico to meet his friend. His fate is uncertain, but it is now, at the end of the film, that Red understands the "hope" Andy had possessed from the start. The final scene shows the reuniting of the two men on a beautiful beach in Mexico. Through all of their trials in prison it is beautiful to see the two friends in a paradise that has no walls. The ocean is endless as are their possibilities.

The scene where Norton inspects Andy's cell for contraband without finding the rock hammer (and they quote In the novella, when Andy comes to Shawshank, the warden is a man named Dunahy; he is replaced by a man named Stammas; who is himself replaced by Sam Norton. In the film, Norton is warden throughout.In the novella, Norton resigns after Andy's escape. In the film, he has embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, and when Andy escapes and makes this known, Norton commits suicide in his office rather than allow himself to be arrested.Brooks' threatening to cut the throat of another prisoner to avoid being paroled only appears in the film. In both the novella and the film, Brooks is paroled and leaves Shawshank. His suicide soon after leaving prison only occurs in the film.In the novella, Andy sells off all his assets while still on trial. Together with a friend, he sets up a false identity and transfers all assets there. In the film, Andy himself sets up the false identity so that he can create accounts to launder money for the warden; Andy then drains these accounts upon his escape.In the novella, there are 14 cells in cellblock 5, facing each other across a corridor. In the movie Andy's cell is upstairs and there is no cell immediately across from his.Red is an Irish-American in the book but in the movie he is black, although when asked by Andy why he is called "Red" he jokingly replies "Maybe it's because I'm Irish."The endings are slightly different. The novella ends with Red en route to find Andy in Mexico but not sure that he will, ending with the words "I hope." The movie shows Red finding Andy on the beach in Mexico.

A major theme of the film is hope, symbolized in the music, but contained throughout the story of the film (even more so than the novella). Using a subdued messianic motif, Stephen King uses Andy Dufresne to bring hope and redemption to the fallen world of Shawshank Prison and its convicted felons — especially to Red.

The character of Brooks is a contrast to Red because the former had become "institutionalized." Red says when discussing Brooks, "These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyways." Brooks had lost all hope and accepted life at Shawshank as normal, was unable to integrate into society when he was released, and consequently commited suicide. (Symbolically, the novella represented this concept with a bird that was raised in captivity but was found dead in the prison courtyard when it was released into the wild -- a scene that was in early drafts of the movie.)

In fact, Red is headed down the same path as Brooks until Andy changes his course by bringing him hope. Andy is thus Red's redeemer (in the religious sense of the word) because he saves Red from the sad end that Brooks met. In a discussion with Red, Andy links music and hope in a better life: "You need music so you don't forget...that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone. That...there's something inside that's yours, that they can't touch." As long as the inmates can remember what it is like to be free, and to feel the world on their own terms, they have hope. If someone is in the prison too long, like Brooks, the knowledge of freedom is lost, and a sort of dependence on the walls is formed that leads to Brooks' tragic end. Red initially resists Andy's admonitions and testimony in the power of hope, but by the end of the film he is convinced. The last line has Red confessing, "I hope," and the film (but not the novella) shows that his hope was well-founded because he finally rejoins his "redeemer" in paradise.

Some critics, including Roger Ebert, believe that the integrity of Andy Dufresne is an important theme in the story line, [1] especially in this situation (prison) where integrity is sorely lacking. Andy Dufresne is an individual of amazing integrity (integrity, here, refers to adherance to a code of morality) among a host of individuals without integrity. It is his deep-seated belief in integrity that provides him with the moral fiber to be uniquely distinct from the other characters in the prison. [2] This character trait is absent from both the inmates and the staff of the prison at Shawshank. Many believe that it is his integrity that provides the foundation for Dufresne's hope, persistence, courage, and self-esteem.

appears under the spring "season" of the book under the heading "Hope springs eternal," which is also the name of a documentary on the special edition DVD.The character Andy has some striking (albeit imperfect) parallels to the most famous messianic figure, Jesus of Nazareth. Both are condemned though innocent, both undergo a version of death, resurrection, and ascension, and both bring hope and redemption to their followers. Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine, whereas Andy's first wonder was convincing the guards to give the prisoners beer. After Andy escapes, his friends become like Jesus' twelve apostles, remembering their time with Andy and telling others about him. The warden also exhibits parallels to the hypocritical religious leaders who opposed Jesus. The writerdirector Frank Darabont was very gratified by the support for his film from the religious community, and he was pleased that they were not offended by the warden, who was the only explicitly religious character in the film, and that they saw him as the hypocrite he was intended to be. Despite the parallels, Darabont denies any attempt to make a religious film and describes the religious interpretation to be imputed to it rather than intrinsic.. The recording used was Karl Böhm's 1968 production for Deutsche Grammophon (catalogue number 449 728-2) and the singers are Gundula Janowitz and Edith Mathis. before Morgan Freeman showed an interest in the part. Not a word changed because of the casting, but one line reads differently. During a prison yard scene Andy asks how Red got his nickname. Freeman answers with a deadpan, "Maybe because I'm Irish."Red calls Andy's plans for going to Zihuatanejo a "shitty pipedream," foreshadowing Andy's long crawl through the sewer pipes, after which Red says that the innocent Andy "crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side."When the warden opens Andy's Bible, he finds that the rock hammer Andy used to escape was stored starting opposite the title page of the Book of Exodus, which recounts the Israelites' escape from Egypt.. In the first instance, Andy asks after the name of the new prisoner who was bludgeoned to death and is told it doesn't matter because he is dead and gone. Later, Andy sees that those who had previously stayed in his cell had carved their name in the wall to establish a remembrance. He begins immortalizing his own name in the wall and in the process discovers what would ultimately be his means for escape. Just before Brooks commits suicide, he memorializes his presence in his new prison by carving his name in a wood panel in his half-way house, and on hearing of his death, the prisoners at Shawshank carve Brooks' name into a sign for the library. Before Red leaves to find Andy, he adds his name beside Brooks' in the half-way house, but he is on a far different trajectory from Brooks because he has found hope., which is about a prison break, was written by Alexander Dumas (mentioned in the film but pronounced "Dumbass" by Heywood), and Andy Dufresne escapes from prison in the movie. Both first names start with the letter "A", and both last names start with the letters "Du" and have a silent "s". was filmed in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, located in north-central Ohio. The prison featured in the film is the old, abandoned Ohio State Reformatory immediately north of downtown Mansfield. The Reformatory buildings have been used in several other films, including . Most of the prison yard has now been demolished to make room for expansion of the adjacent Mansfield Correctional Facility, but the Reformatory's Gothic- ("Castle Dracula") Administration Building remains standing and due to its prominent use in films, has become a tourist attraction.Since most of the filming took place in the prison, many of the cast and crew began to feel like real prisoners (compare the Stanford prison experiment). When they had opportunity to shoot outside the prison walls, they described it like a freeing vacation, and director Frank Darabont remembers the days outside as particularly happy.Gil Bellows (Tommy) had never played a major role in a movie, and to help with nervousness, director Frank Darabont advised Bellows to pretend that the other, more experienced actors were naked or in frilly underwear while his character regaled theirs with his story of capture.Although Renee Blaine, who plays Mrs. Dufresne, appears only briefly in the arms of her lover during the opening sequence of the film, she is featured on the back cover of both the original DVD and VHS cassette in the interest of claiming some sex appeal for a movie that almost exclusively features men. The picture does not appear on the special edition DVD. Darabont originally intended to have a longer "The re-curring quote "Get busy living or get busy dying" was used by the Chicago band Fall Out Boy as the title for the 12th track of their 2005 album From Under the Cork Tree.