Synopsis for
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Plus avec IMDbPro »

In 1947, Andy Dufresne ( Tim Robbins ), a banker, was convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, a golf pro. He was sentenced to two life sentences, and sent to the notoriously harsh Shawshank Prison in Maine. Andy always claimed his innocence.

During the first night, the chief guard Byron Hadley ( Clancy Brown ), savagely beat up a newly arrived inmate because of his crying & complaining. Meanwhile Andy kept to himself even though during the day Ellis Redding ( Morgan Freeman ), also known as Red, had bet against others that Andy would have been the one to break down first. That beating led to the new inmate's death. About a month later, Andy approached Red because Red could smuggle things from outside for a fee. He asked if Red could find him a rock hammer , an instrument he claimed he needed for his hobby in rock collecting. Andy also wanted to get a poster of Rita Hayworth. Her film's Gilda was shown to the inmates in prison quite a few times already & they seemed to enjoy watching it over & over again.

Over the first two years of doing time, Andy worked in the prison laundry. He was regularly beaten up, and raped by a group of sadistic thugs known as the "Sisters".

One day, during the tarring of a roof in prison with a dozen inmates, Andy overheard Hadley complaining about having to pay taxes for an upcoming inheritance. He offered his service to help Hadley for tax shelter in exchange for some cold beers for other fellows.

In consequence, Andy was sent to work with Brooks Hatlen ( James Whitmore ), an aging inmate in the prison library, where he set up a make-shift desk to provide services to other guards including the warden with income tax returns & other financial advises. His practices became so appreciated that even guards from other prisons, when they came for inter-prison baseball matches brought their tax returns to Andy for advises & helps to fill them out, too.

Beside that, Andy began to write letters once a week for authorities outside Shawshank, asking for funds to improve the library. He continued sending letters week after week without any reply. Yet he kept on writing .

One day he was brutally raped once more by Bogs & the Sisters gang. This landed him in the infirmary for a month, Bogs was sent to the Hole for a week. Upon returning to his cell, Bogs found out Hadley & another guard were there, waiting for him. Bogs was beaten up to the point that he could never walk again & finished his days at a minimum security prison, eating liquid meals with a straw. From then on, nobody ever dare to touch Andy anymore.

Warden Samuel Norton profited on Andy's knowledge of bookkeeping and devised a scheme whereby he put prison inmates to work in projects which he won by outbidding other contractors ( cheap labor from the prisoners ). Occasionally, he let others get some contracts if they bribed him. Andy laundered money for the warden by setting up many accounts in different banks using a fake identity : " Randall Stephens ".

After 6 years of writing letters, Andy received $200 for the library. Instead of following their request not to bother them anymore, Andy doubled his campaign of letter writing. He received more funds & materials for the library. Thus, it was expanded and renovated. One day, upon receiving a box of records, he put Mozart's on a turntable & channelled the music through a PA system. He turned up the volume & locked the office where the record player was to prevent interference by the warden & the guards & let all inmates who were in the yard listened to The Marriage of Figaro. That stunt landed Andy in the Hole for a week but he seemed unfazed & the inmates quite appreciated to be able to listen, very unexpectedly, such uplifting & sublime music. With the enlarged library & more materials, Andy began to teach those inmates who wanted to take the high school diplomas.

In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy ( Gil Bellows ) came to Shawshank . One day he happened to mention that some years ago, he had a cellmate who boasted about working at a golf club & that he had killed a club member who was a golf pro & his lover during a robbery at the man's house. The woman's husband, a banker had gone to prison for those 2 murders. With this new information, Andy, full of hope, brought the matter to the warden's attention, expecting he could help him get another trial with Tommy as a witness. The reaction from Norton was the contrary of what Andy had hoped for. Fearing the end of the lucrative ill-gotten money that Andy was looking after for him, Norton had Tommy shot dead by Hadley and Andy sent to solitary confinement for 2 months.

Afterwards, Andy returned to the usual daily life at Shawshank, a seemingly broken man. He told Red that if one day he would be paroled, he should go to a field in Buxton, Maine & look for a metal box buried nearby an oak tree which Andy intended to leave for Red. Andy refused to reveal more what's inside the box when Red asked him.

Red and friends started to worry that Andy might contemplate suicide ( he had asked for a 6-foot rope ). The following morning, Andy was not accounted for as usual from his cell. At the same time, Norton became alarmed when he found out Andy's shoes were in his shoe box instead of his own ( he had ordered Andy to shine his shoes the day before ) & extremely furious. He rushed to Andy's cell with other guards & while yelling & throwing things, discovered the wall behind the Raquel Welch's poster was hollow ( Rita Hayworth's & Marilyn Monroe's posters were there before for the 19 years Andy lived at Shawshank ). Behind that poster was a tunnel big enough for a man to crawl through & that's where Andy had disappeared into during the night. The rope was to tie a plastic bag containing the warden's clothes & shoes to Andy while he was crawling through that shit hole for 500 yards. All they could find of Andy were his prison's clothes & a bar of soap. The night Andy got away, it was pouring rain.

With Andy's escape in 1966, it became clear that he was able to get out by digging for 19 years through the walls with the rock hammer he bought from Red not too long after his arrival at Shawshank ( apparently, a new hammer replaced a worn-out one throughout the years ). Andy also documented wrongdoings committed by Norton & Hadley enough to sent them to a local newspaper. He then went to different banks and presented himself as Randall Stephens & walked away with cashier's cheques in hand.

After the newspaper published these new findings, law enforcements came calling at Shawshank. The warden, with the police knocked forcefully at the door, shot himself to death. Hadley was handcuffed & led away & according to Red, " cried like a girl ".

Shortly after, Red received a postcard with nothing written on it but he knew it was from Andy. The inmates enjoyed recounting Andy's exploits for the 19 years he had to be at Shawshank.

When Red was finally paroled in 1967, he went to work at the grocery store & stayed at the halfway house ( where Mr. Hatlen had previously worked & stayed after his release & eventually killed himself ) for sometime . One day, having had enough, Red violated his own parole, left the halfway house & followed Andy's instruction. He arrived at a field in Buxton, Maine & found the oaktree & then a box buried under some rocks surrouding that tree. That box, left by Andy, contained a letter & some money intended for Red.

The two friends finally reunited on the beach of Zihuatanejo in the Pacific coast ( which Andy mentioned to Red before his escape ).