The picture begins with Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) coming home and watching his wife and her lover making out. With an awkward boner he shoots (not his gun but from his gun) her wife and lover making a happy ending for him. He was then pleaded guilty and since the state of Maine didn’t had death penalty, he was given two consecutive life sentences and sent to the harsh gay dungeon a.k.a Shawshank Prison where he had to get redemption.
On the first night the prisoners used to bet who’ll breakout while the chief guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown) beats them. Ellis Boyd Redding ( Morgan Freeman) aka Red bets on Andy to loose first but the overweight stole the show by his hysterics and Red was literally red for loosing miserably which he didn’t experience in past 7 years. Later Andy approaches Red, who runs a contraband in the prison, to find a Rock Hammer for his hobby rock sculpting which obviously Red thought Andy would use for his escape but the tool was smaller than Verne Troyer, he could barely dig anything besides using it as a dildo.
During initial years Andy was raped by a gang “The Sisters” who sexually assaulted the other prisoners, Andy resisted and fights back but numbers game made him helpless. One day Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) announced they need volunteers to resurface the factory off-sight, around 100 men applied but with Red’s networking his friends and Andy were the selected ones.
During the job Andy hears Hadley complaining about Taxes which Andy tries to advice him as a banker but things weren’t so good, Hadley was about to throw him off the roof. Andy lets Hadley know how he can shelter his money from the IRS and saving a lot for his wife in exchange of cold beers for his gang. Despite being the most brutal guard, Hadley accepted the offer and gave them chilled beers. With this gesture Andy has now entered the privilege zone amongst the guards and the inmates. Later Andy tells Red that he wants a poster of Rita Hayworth. Soon Andy was attacked by Boggs (Mark Roltson) the leader of The Sisters and was brutally beaten, Boggs then spent a week in the prisons infirmary and after his release, he was beaten by Hadley and the guards which made him paralyzed and was transferred him to prison’s hospital after this they never interfered with Andy.
Warden came to know about Andy’s skill and surprised him with the inspection, later Andy along-with oldman inmate Brooks Halten (James Whitmore) were moved to the prisons library where they provided the guards and the warden with the financial services. Andy then started to think about expanding the library, he started to write letters to the State Senate requesting for funds. As days passed Brooks sentence was about to end but he didn’t want to go and threatens to kill his inmate. Andy tried to convince him and made him to Parole out of the prison.
It was difficult to adjust life outside prison so he commits suicide. While his friend discussing about Brooks decision, Red says “These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.”
After six years of struggle Andy receives $200.00 from the Senate and collection of old books for the library and later Andy doubled his struggle to get even more. With the donation of old books at Warden’s office he find Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, he wanted to play so badly that he locked one of the guards and broadcasted it through the warden office all over the prison, everyone was captivated with the female voice and the music. Andy was immediately sent to the solitary confinement for 2 weeks, where he spent thinking about the music.
Days passed by Andy was now the Financial Adviser handling all the guards and wardens finances with the expanded library where he teaches the prisoner who wants receive their High School Diploma.
In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy (Gil Bellows) comes to Shawshank to serve time for armed robbery. Andy suggests that Tommy take up another line of work besides theft. The suggestion really gets to Tommy and he works on earning his high school equivalency diploma. One day Red tells Tommy about Andy’s case. Tommy is visibly upset at hearing Andy’s story and tells Andy and Red that he had a cellmate in another prison who boasted about killing a man who was a pro golfer at the country club he worked at, along with his lover. The woman’s husband, a banker, had gone to prison for those murders. With this new information, Andy, full of hope, meets with the warden, expecting North to help him get another trial with Tommy as a witness. The reaction from Norton is completely contrary to what Andy hoped for. When Andy says emphatically that he would never reveal the money laundering schemes he set up for Norton over the years, the warden becomes furious and orders him to solitary for a month. The warden later meets with Tommy alone and asks him if he’ll testify on Andy’s behalf. Tommy enthusiastically agrees and the warden has him shot dead by Hadley.
When the warden visits Andy in solitary, he tells him that Tommy was killed while attempting escape. Andy tells Norton that the financial schemes will stop. The warden counters, saying the library will be destroyed and all its materials burned. Andy will also lose his private cell and be sent to the block with the most hardened criminals. The warden gives Andy another month in solitary.
Afterwards, Andy returns to the usual daily life at Shawshank, a seemingly broken man. One day he talks to Red, about how although he didn’t kill his wife, his personality drove her away, which led to her infidelity and death. He says if he’s ever freed or escapes, he’d like to go to Zihuatanejo, a beach town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He also tells Red how he got engaged. He and his future wife went up to a farm in Buxton, Maine, to a large oak tree at the end of a stone wall. The two made love under the tree, after which he proposed to her. He tells Red that, if he should ever be paroled, he should look for that field, and that oak tree. There, under a large black volcanic rock that would look out of place, Andy has buried a box that he wants Red to have. Andy refuses to reveal what might be in that box.
Later, Andy asks for a length of rope, leading Red and his buddies to suspect he will commit suicide. At the end of the day, Norton asks Andy to shine his shoes for him and put his suit in for dry-cleaning before retiring for the night.
The following morning, Andy is not accounted for as usual in his cell. At the same time, Norton becomes alarmed when he finds Andy’s shoes in his shoebox instead of his own. He rushes to Andy’s cell and demands an explanation. Hadley brings in Red, but Red insists he knows nothing of Andy’s plans. Becoming increasing hostile and paranoid, Norton starts throwing Andy’s sculpted rocks around the cell. When he throws one at Andy’s poster of Raquel Welch (previously occupied by Marilyn Monroe, and before that by Rita Hayworth), the rock punches through and into the wall. Norton tears the poster away from the wall and finds a tunnel just wide enough for a man to crawl through.
During the previous night’s thunderstorm, Andy wore Norton’s shoes to his cell, catching a lucky break when no one notices. He packed some papers and Norton’s clothes into a plastic bag, tied it to himself with the rope he’d asked for, and escaped through his hole. The tunnel he’d excavated led him to a space between two walls of the prison where he found a sewer main line. Using a rock, he hit the sewer line in time with the lightning strikes and eventually burst it. Crawling through 500 yards in the pipe and through the raw sewage contained in it, Andy emerged in a brook outside the walls. A search team later found his uniform and his rock hammer, which had been worn nearly to nothing.
That morning, Andy walks into the Maine National Bank in Portland, where he had put Warden Norton’s money. Using his assumed identity as Randall Stephens, and with all the necessary documentation, he closes the account and walks out with a cashier’s check. Before he leaves, he asks them to drop a package in the mail. He continues his visitations to nearly a dozen other local banks, ending up with some $370,000. The package contains Warden Norton’s account books, which are delivered straight to the Portland Daily Bugle newspaper.Not long after, the police storm Shawshank Prison. Hadley is arrested for murder; Red says he was taken away “crying like a little girl.” Warden Norton finally opens his safe, which he hadn’t touched since Andy escaped, and instead of his books, he finds the Bible he had given Andy. Norton opens it to the book of Exodus and finds that the pages have been cut out in the shape of Andy’s rock hammer. Norton walks back to his desk as the police pound on his door, takes out a small revolver and shoots himself under the chin. Red remarks that he wondered if the warden thought, right before pulling the trigger, how “Andy could ever have gotten the best of him.”Shortly after, Red receives a postcard from Fort Hancock, Texas, with nothing written on it. Red takes it as a sign that Andy made it into Mexico to freedom. Red and his buddies kill time talking about Andy’s exploits (with a lot of embellishments), but Red just misses his friend.
At Red’s next parole hearing in 1967, he talks to the parole board about how “rehabilitated” was a made-up word, and how he regretted his actions of the past of murder over 40 years ago and no longer expects anything from them. His parole is granted this time. He goes to work at a grocery store, and stays at the same halfway house room Brooks had stayed in. He frequently walks by a pawn shop which has several guns and compasses in the window. At times he contemplates trying to get back into prison feeling that he has no life outside of prison where he has spent most of his adult life, but he remembers the promise he made to Andy.One day, with a compass he bought from the pawn shop, he follows Andy’s instructions, hitchhiking to Buxton and arriving at the stone wall Andy described. Just as Andy said, there was a large black stone. Under it was a small box containing a large sum of cash and instructions to find him. He said he needed somebody “who could get things” for a “project” of his.Red violates parole and leaves the halfway house, unconcerned since no one is likely to do an extensive manhunt for “an old crook like [him].” He takes a bus to Fort Hancock, where he crosses into Mexico. The two friends are finally reunited on the beach of Zihuatanejo.
Moral:
Persistence is the key to success, maintain your dignity wherever you are and true friendship is the gift that only few gets.
Film Guru 