Written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on a Stephen King novella. Twenty years in the life of an innocent(?) man serving life in a Maine prison.

Cast:

Opening scene: "If I Didn't Care" playing on the car radio as Andy Dufresne sits drunk, loading his gun.

Next he is testifying, very low-key, on the witness stand, accused of murdering his wife and her lover, the golf pro. He testifies he sobered up, shot no one, and threw the gun in the river. But someone killed them, and the gun was never found. Other evidence clearly puts Andy at the scene. And each victim was shot four times--he had to reload. The judge tells him he finds him particularly cold: he gives him two consecutive life sentences.

Morgan Freeman, as Red, gets a parole hearing at 20 years: he says he's rehabilitated, but he is denied. He is the prison's hustler--can get you anything. Andy Dufresne came to Shawshank in early 1947, Red tells us. He had been vice-president of a Portland, Maine, bank.

New fish arriving on the bus. The convicts are betting who will be the first one to break down. Red bets on Andy. The new men meet Mr. Hadley, the Captain, and Mr. Norton, the Warden. The warden tells them Rule No. 1 is: "No blasphemy. The other rules you'll figure out." The warden says he believes in discipline and the Bible. "Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank."

Andy is hosed down and deloused. The inmates are marched into the cell naked. Who will break down crying? The lights are turned out. The convicts start talking to the new fish. Fat Ass breaks down. Captain Hadley gives him a beating for all to see. Captain Hadley is a foul-mouthed monster. Andy Dufresne never makes a sound his first night--costs Red two packs of cigarettes (19:42).

The men go to the dining hall. There is a worm in Andy's beans. He gives it to Brooks, who has a baby bird in his pocket. They hear Fat Ass died untreated in the infirmary.

Andy is approached by another inmate in the shower. He walks away. Andy meets Red on the yard. He asks for a rock hammer: he wants to work with rocks. Red warns Andy that Boggs and the Sisters are after him. They agree on a price of $10 for the rock hammer.

Red said he could see why some of the boys didn't like Andy. The package with the rock hammer is smuggled in: Red says it would take 600 years to tunnel out with one.

Dufresne is attacked by three of the Sisters--beaten up and raped. He never said who did it. It happened several times in the first two years. Then Andy's life changed. Red got him put on a crew working on the roof for a month. Captain Hadley is talking about inheriting $35,000, complaining about having to pay taxes. Andy offers tax advice, almost getting pushed off the roof before he can explain to Hadley how to avoid taxes by giving a gift to his wife, and offering to set it up for him. In return, Andy asked that each man on the work crew get three beers to drink, which they did, the next-to-last day on the job. Andy didn't drink one himself; he says he quit drinking (38:40).

Andy and Red are becoming friends. Andy scrapes the wall of his cell with his hammer. He asks Red for a poster of Rita Haworth (as they watch "Gilda," the prison movie of the month). When Andy declines to do oral sex on Boggs, the Sisters give him a severe beating, putting him in the infirmary for a month. In return, Boggs is given his own beating by Hadley; Boggs is left in a wheelchair, and transferred to a minimum security prison.

The boys dig up some rocks for Andy to work with, and Red gets the Rita Haworth poster. When his cell is shaken down, the warden allows him to keep the poster on his wall. They ignore his contraband: quid pro quo.

The warden has Andy brought to his office. He offers to transfer Andy to a better job, which turns out to be the library, where Brooks works. Brooks has never had an assistant, since 1912. As it turns out, they want him in the library to help the employees with their taxes and financial management. Andy says he is "a convicted murderer who provides sound financial planning."

Dufresne wants to expand the prison library. He starts writing letters to the legislature. He begins doing taxes for all the guards and the warden. He becomes a regular cottage industry. Brooks goes crazy in the library one day, taking another convict hostage. Andy talks him down. Brooks is upset because he has been paroled, after 50 years. Red says he's institutionalized--he depends on the walls to define his world (1:00:00). Brooks turns Jake, his bird, loose.

Brooks leaves the prison. Rides a bus downtown. Automobiles everywhere. He gets a room in a halfway house and a job in the grocery store bagging groceries. He feeds the birds in the park. He has problems sleeping. He'd rather be back in prison. He says he’s decided not to stay. So he puts on his suit and hangs himself in his room. He has carved the message: "Brooks was here."

Andy's letters pay off: books and a check arrive, after six years. He finds a Mozart opera (Is it "The Marriage of Figaro?") and plays it over the prison's PA system, locking the guard in the toilet. It is a magical moment in the prison: everyone stops to listen to the two Italian ladies sing. Red says the music has a message "so beautiful it can't be expressed in words." The warden comes up very angry. Hadley breaks the glass to get in. Andy gets two weeks in the hole.

Andy talks to the other inmates about music and hope. Red says, “Hope is a dangerous thing.” Red goes back for another parole hearing after 30 years--still rehabilitated, still rejected. Andy's been in ten years. He gives Red a harmonica. Red gives him a Marilyn Monroe poster in return.

Andy keeps writing letters. He gets an annual appropriation and expands the library. People send him books from everywhere. They name the library after Brooks Hatlen. The best prison library in New England.

The warden designs a new program to let convicts work outside. He is skimming profits from leasing convict labor. Andy is keeping the books on the warden's shady deals. "A river of dirty money running through this place." Andy has created a nonexistent person, Randall Stephens, whose name is on all the accounts. Andy says he had to come to prison to be a crook (1:23:00).

Tommy Williams ("Mr. Rock and Roll") arrives at Shawshank in 1965. He is a thief, in and out of prisons all over New England. Tommy decides to get his GED. Andy works with him one-on-one. Tommy is his project now. The poster on the wall now is Raquel Welch (from "One Million Years B.C.").

Tommy gets frustrated at the end of his test and throws it away. Andy retrieves it. When Red tells Tommy what Andy is in for, Tommy tells them he was in prison with the guy who actually did the double murder, Elmo Batch, a high-strung burglar. Tommy tells them the whole story, as Elmo told it to him. Andy tells the warden, who says he thinks the whole tale is a fantasy. Andy asks, “How can you be so obtuse?” The warden puts him in solitary for a month--their relations are clearly strained.

Andy is innocent, after 19 years in prison. Tommy gets his test results: he passed his GED. The guard sends Tommy out by the fence to meet the warden, who asks him if he is willing to tell his story in court. When Tommy says yes, the warden gives a signal, and Hadley shoots Tommy from the tower. No more alibi.

The warden visits solitary to threaten Andy: keep on as is, or he'll cast Andy down with the Sodomites. "You'll think you've been fucked by a train." He'll close the library and burn the books (1:40:00). Andy gets an extra month in solitary to think.

Andy tells Red he thinks he killed his wife, because he drove her away. She said he was like a closed book.

Andy tells Red about this place in Mexico on the Pacific Ocean he would want to live if he got out of prison. Run a hotel and get a boat to take his guests out. Red says that, for himself, he is institutionalized, like Brooks. Andy says it comes down to a simple choice: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." (1:45:40). Andy tells Red about a hayfield outside Buxton, Maine, with something buried under a rock. They start worrying that Andy is suicidal.

Andy is working as the warden's clerk again. He is silent and depressed, with a six-foot length of rope. Red worries about him all night. The next morning Dufresne is gone from his cell at morning count. He has disappeared. The warden finds Andy's shoes in his own shoe box.

The warden goes crazy in Andy's cell. He throws a rock through the Raquel Welch poster, which covers a huge hole. Andy used his rock hammer to tunnel through the wall, escaping in 1966, after 19 years. "Pressure and time," that's all it took, Red says.

We see how Andy set up his escape. Then he crawled through his tunnel and broke a hole in the sewer pipe to get outside the prison (lucky that thunderstorm happened by at just the right time). He crawled through 500 yards of shit to escape. Emerging from the sewer, he tears off his shirt and stands with his arms upraised in the rain–a figure of triumph.

The next morning, Randall Stephens visits banks all over Portland, withdrawing $370,000 from the warden's secret accounts. Andy has sent documents to the press about the illegal activities at Shawshank. Police come to arrest Hadley, who breaks down crying, and Warden Norton, who shoots himself in his office rather than be captured (2:03:30). Red hoped his last thought was of Andy.

Red continues on in prison. He gets a postcard from Andy on the Mexican border. Red gets another parole board hearing, after 40 years. They ask if he's been rehabilitated. He says, "Rehabilitated? ... You know, I don't have any idea what that means. ... A made-up word. A politician's word...." He thinks about what he was like 40 years ago: a young, stupid kid who committed a terrible crime. But he can't talk sense to that boy. "That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. ... Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. ... To tell you the truth, I don't give a shit."

Naturally, now that he has grasped the true meaning of the process, Red is approved for parole (2:08:00). He gets Brooks's same room in the halfway house, the same job bagging groceries. He doesn't think he can make it on the outside. He thinks about breaking his parole so he can go back in. “Terrible thing to live in fear.”

Red remembers his promise to Andy. He travels to Buxton to look for the treasure buried beneath the stone. He finally finds the wall, and a piece of black igneous rock. Buried beneath it is a letter from Andy and an envelope full of cash. Andy invites Red to join him in Zihuatanejo: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Red rejects dying and gets busy living. He rides down to Ft. Hancock, Texas, to cross the border into Mexico. Red finds Andy working on his boat (2:18:00). Scene of the Pacific Ocean beach as the credits begin to roll. End credits (2:22:15).