Shawshank Redemption

I enjoyed the movie "Shawshank Redemption" more than I expected to. Most movies about prisons don't interest me very much, but this one caught and held my interest. I'm not sure how realistic it is, though. I wonder how many prisoners have ever been forced to serve a life sentence and then been found innocent? I'd like to think that most prisoners actually have committed their crimes. I also don't think that the prison is run in a realistic way. I don't think that guards would be so violent towards prisoners, and I'm not sure that the money laundering scheme could possibly worked as well as it was portrayed in the movie.

Part of the reason I enjoyed this movie so much was because it had so many funny and/or dramatic moments. A few of my favorites were Red's speech about prison life at 0:59:30, when Andy plays the record to the entire prison over the intercom at 1:08:30, and when Red makes his parole speech at 02:08:05. I also really loved the ending.

I want to discuss what happens at 1:03:42, when the prisoner who's on parole kills himself. It's ironic that he's released from prison because of good behavior, and that prompts him to behave badly for the first time in years so that he can return to prison again. Is it common for paroled prisoners to commit suicide? I know that some people in really bad situations commit crimes because they know that they'll have cells to live in if they go to prison, so I wasn't too surprised when he wanted to break parole and go back to Shawshank, but I was surprised that he chose to kill himself.

I also don't understand how Andy escaped so completely. How did they fail to catch him? It's not like the warden didn't know the name of the fake identity Andy had created. I thought that that was an implausible plot twist.

Shawshank Redemption gave me a glimpse of what life in prison is like. It's an engaging, suspenseful, dramatic movie. It made me laugh, cry, and appreciate my life. Any movie that can do all of that is pretty great.