Face-Off: The Green Mile vs. The Shawshank Redemption

Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne
Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding
William Sadler as Haywood
Clancy Brown as Captain Hadley
Bob Gunton as Warden Norton
James Whitmore as Brooks Hatlen
Gil Bellows as Tommy
Mark Rolston as Bogs

With SHAWSHANK Darabont makes the prison as rich and absorbing a character as any of the men inside the stone walls. Darabont creates a sense of epic scope by moving from the yard to the woodshop, to the kitchen and the cells with ease – as if we were being taken on a historical tour. What sells the whole thing, of course, is the brilliant work from the actors, with Darabont guiding them through natural performances that sell the idea that these men have spent decades locked away in a certain rhythm. But when we talk Darabont we can’t just bring up direction, because what he’s even better at is writing, and the script for SHAWSHANK is a pure force of nature and, at times, pure poetry. He was able to take King’s novella and turn it into a powerful meditation on hope and survival, with more than enough lines to make it the most quotable movie ever…outside of a Will Ferrell movie, of course. Many engaging conversations between Andy and Red, and not to mention every line of Freeman’s narration, all make up this piece of genius. Easily one of the best scripts ever.

After being found guilty of killing his wife and her lover, Andy Dufresne is sent to Shawshank Penitentiary, where he is to live out two life sentences. There he meets the wise lifer Red, and over the next two decades, he spends his life trying with every fiber of his being to keep the hope alive that the one part of him that can’t be locked away, his soul, won’t be beaten down and killed. `

Andy’s Crime

Andy: “Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, I find it decidedly inconvenient that the gun was never found.”


Meet Red


New Fish


Red:”Tall drink of water with a silver spoon up his ass.”


Hadley: “You eat when we say you eat. You piss when we say you piss, and you shit when we say you shit. You got that, you maggot dick motherfucker?”


Warden Norton: “Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me.”


The First to Crack


Meet Brooks & Jake


Andy: “I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.”

Red: “I’m known to locate certain things from time to time”

Andy: “Red. Why do they call you that?”

Red: “Maybe it’s because I’m Irish.”

Red: “He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say… I liked Andy from the start.”


The Sisters Attack Pt. 1


Red: “I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that – but prison is no fairy-tale world.”


Making a Deal with Hadley


Beer in the Sun


The Sisters Attack Pt. 2


Andy: “I read it. You know how to read, you ignorant fuck?”


Bogs Down


Rita Hayworth


Red: “Two things never happened again after that. The Sisters never laid a finger on Andy again… and Boggs never walked again.”


Andy: Prison Accountant


The Ballad of Brooks


Sweet Music


Building a New Library


Andy: “The funny thing is – on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook. “


The Arrival of Tommy


The Truth Comes Out


Andy: “How can you be so obtuse?”


The Death of Tommy


Andy: “I killed her, Red. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I drove her away. That’s why she died: because of me.”


Andy: “You know what they say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory.”


Andy: “Get busy living or get busy dying.”


A Great Escape


Red: Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine, or maybe I just don’t want to. 500 yards. That’s five football fields, just shy of half a mile.”


Salvation Lay Within


Red: “Andy Dufresne – who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.”


Red on the Outside


Zihuatanjeo

SHAWSHANK has its emotional moments too, the prime being in watching Brooks trying to live on the outside world, only to come to the conclusion the task is impossible. But the movie aims to more inspirational than tear-jerking, even though next to MILE it does rank among King’s more heartfelt adaptations.

Though it doesn’t place the characters in some “race against time in the wilderness” scenario, SHAWSHANK is nonetheless a story of survival, and an accessible one at that. At its core, the story of Andy Dufresne is one of a man doing everything in his power to retain what little himself doesn’t belong to the prison he’s locked behind. Even in the face of mortal danger from the Sisters and fear of pain at the hands of the guards and the warden if he stopped doing their bidding, Dufresne never faltered and was always the best version of himself he could be. Watching him break out of jail and drives that convertible all the way down to Mexico is the ultimate demonstration of humanity triumphing over adversity.

SHAWSHANK easily gets the win here because, as I said before, the prison is just as big a character in the film as anyone else, and prison life is a key aspect in telling the story of survival in its walls. There’s danger around every corner (here in the form of the aggressively frisky Sisters), violent prison guards and a warden who sees these men as cattle, not human beings. But there’s light to in comradery and the bond these men have to form in order to stay afloat, even if that relationship is with a bird named Jake. The authenticity of the prison environment is one of the hallmarks of the movie.

Oscars:

Best Picture (Nom)

Best Sound (Nom)

Best Cinematography (Won)

Best Film Editing (Won)

Best Actor: Morgan Freeman (Nom)

Best Original Score (Nom)

Best Adapted Screenplay (Nom)

Golden Globes:

Best Screenplay (Nom)

Best Actor: Morgan Freeman (Nom)

Praise

Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (Audience Score: 98%)

IMDB: 9.3 (Top Rated Movie #1)

Metacritic: 80 (User Score: 9.0)

Money:

$28 million domestic