The Shawshank Redemption Review

After all these years, I've been trying really really hard to figure out why people are so much in love with this movie. And I am very sorry, but I just don't see it. It's not a bad movie to me by all means... it's just nothing special to me either. Please understand - I am not trying to bash you for loving it or bash this movie for being loved. If you love it, that's awesome. I just want to explain how I feel about it. Especially since people say THIS one tops EVERY OTHER SINGLE MOVIE EVER MADE. That, people, is extreme...
There's no originality with this movie whatsoever. It's just about a innocent guy who gets into jail and tries to get through the time in there and eventually escape. I don't understand what this movie has to offer we haven't seen already in other movies? The aspect of breaking out from a prison you can not escape from has been done before in Escape From Alcatraz... and that was with Clint Eastwood. Give me a valid reason why that movie is worse than this one? At least Clint Eastwood gave us a performance with his role. But in The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins plays the main character.... and he is doing a pretty bad job, if you ask me. Not awful or anything - just that it's SO bland. And on top of everything, his character is written to be like a perfect Jesus-archetype with no flaws whatsoever, it actually sickens me. He is a "perfect human being" - nothing bad that happens to him is in any way his fault. Every decision he makes is "perfect".
It doesn't help either Morgan Freeman is typecasted here as the same generic mentor-figure he basically always plays more or less in all his movies. And as for other side-characters, they either die or are forgotten about. When that young dude who gets along with everyone enters the prison, he could as well have a big sign saying "dead meat". No point in fooling us, movie - we know what's going to happen. Movies are always doing this - if a really nice and friendly person suddenly gets introduced in a drama-themed movie, he or she will most likely die.
Then we got an old dude who gets released from the prison in the movie after his "lifetime" is over in there. And I have said this before, and I can say it again - his story arc is the best thing about the movie, and I wish the movie was about him. After he gets out from jail, it's very interesting to listen to his inner monologue about how hard it is for him to handle this new world he knows nothing about. He eventually decides to hang himself, since he can gain nothing from the world now. This is a good message about how "lifetime" is wrong the way it works, and that it should be handled differently. If the movie had followed this guy from start to finish in jail with him as the main character, I would understand why people praise it a lot better than I do now. All we got instead was a bland perfect guy who just simply escapes and lives happily ever after, like in a fairy tale. If the movie portrayed itself in a different way, this ending might have worked - but it portrays itself like a dead serious movie with heavy themes to deal with. And that's actually another flaw with the movie - it takes itself SOOO seriously. Not a single joke or funny moment in the entire movie. No, I don't think ANY movie should ever be without that.

And of course, this is a Stephen King movie - so another obvious flaw with this one is that the story is soooooo dragged out. Half of the movie is just filler, basically. It's kinda ironic - people constantly say they hate fillers in movies. But this movie is filled with fillers, literally. The story is simple: "Innocent guy gets into prison, the prison is corrupt, he tries to handle it, he has a mentor, they plan to escape, they struggle with it, then succeeds with it. The end."
This story could have been told in half an hour... or hell, even in 20 minutes. But nope - it's 2 hours and 22 minutes long. I would say 1 hour and 30 minutes would be too long for this storyline, despite that being standard length for a full length feature. But THAT long? Simply overkill.
And yeah, speaking of corrupt prison - the manager or whatever it's called literally is the type of villain Nostalgia Critic tends to spoof. You know, those going like "You must understand, this is most unorthodox - n'ha-n'ha-n'ha! *snorts*"? Yeah. They even picked an actor who looks like a generic James Bond villain... that's just silly.

Not to mention - the music is forgettable, the movie lacks a distinguished style, and everything feels like it has already been done. Not a bad movie - but to me very mediocre and doesn't leave any impact with me whatsoever. If it wasn't for the fact that people love it so much, I would also say it's very forgettable.

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