Based on the Stephen King short novel, screenwriter and director Frank Darabont brings forth a tale of an innocent man named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who has been accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Unable to prove his innocence, Andy Durfresne is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine. Reserved and out of his depth within the prison, he eventually befriends Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), the man who “knows how to get things” in prison for a price. For Andy, he makes the strange request of a rock hammer as he wishes to create a chess piece collection. Although an unusual request, he accommodates Andy and also his request for a poster of a Hollywood film starlet for his room.

The two commence a lasting friendship, especially during Andy’s first couple of years at Shawshank where his life soon goes from bad to worse as he is targeted by a group of predators known as the sisters only to be brutally abused. Eventually he finds a way out of their net and eventually becomes the accountant for the staff of the prison, thanks to his banking background. The warden also devises a way for Andy to help him skim from the system where he creates a fake account to assist the warden.

Trouble arrives again for Andy in the form of a young inmate named Tommy (Gil Bellows) who he takes under his wing to help him study to get his high school diploma. When Tommy learns the circumstances that sent Andy to prison, he reveals he once did time at another facility with a killer who confessed to murdering a woman and her lover and the crime was pinned on an innocent banker which was him.

From the news Andy approaches the warden about this information, however if Andy is released, the warden's nefarious skimming from the system threatens his very operation and he arranges for Tommy to have an "accident". Andy becomes a broken man and spends several months in solitary confinement and when he returns to the general population, he eventually completes his grand plan of framing the warden, escaping prison and starting a new life for himself. The Shawshank Redemption is a beautifully written movie about one man's difficult struggle in a world he has no chance of coping, unless he changes. With that said, The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about human courage in the face of unbeatable odds that makes this one of the most memorable movies of the 20th century.

On Blu-ray, The Shawshank Redemption is quite an impressive movie with extraordinary image quality and vibrant colours that is matched with a True HD 5.1 audio track that boasts crystal clear audio and makes good use of the surround sound capabilities. With a variety of engaging special features, The Shawshank Redemption is a brilliant movie from 1990's which is a shame that it never won any Oscars. We could highly recommend this drama movie to just about anyone which is quite emotional at times, however is worth the journey from start to finish.