In 1947, a banker named Andrew "Andy" Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover based on strong circumstantial evidence and is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine. At the prison, inmate Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding is rejected for parole, after having served twenty years of his life sentence, shortly before Andy's arrival. After a secluded first month, Andy gradually becomes acquainted with Red's circle of friends, and Red himself, who is known for cleverly smuggling in contraband. After a month of adjusting to his new life, Andy approaches Red and asks him to get a rock hammer, intending to pursue a hobby of rock collecting. Red supplies the hammer for ten dollars, and later fulfills Andy's request for a poster of Rita Hayworth.One day in 1949, while tarring the roof of Shawshank's license plate factory, Andy overhears the captain of the prison guards, Captain Byron Hadley, bitterly complaining about the taxes he will have to pay on a forthcoming inheritance. Andy approaches Hadley with a solution that will allow him to keep the entire inheritance tax-free; though Hadley nearly throws Andy off the roof initially, Andy's willingness to set up the transaction for the cost of beer for the tarring crew wins Hadley's respect. It also earns the respect of the inmates, especially when Andy gives his share of the beer to the others (as he had been drunk at the time of his alleged crime, Andy now refrains from drinking alcohol). Prior to this incident, Andy had frequently been beaten and sexually assaulted by a gang called "The Sisters", led by inmates Bogs and Rooster. After a particularly vicious beating at the hands of the Sisters lands Andy in the infirmary, Bogs returns to his cell from a week in solitary confinement to find Captain Hadley there. Hadley inflicts a brutal nightstick beating on Bogs, which leaves him paralyzed. Bogs is sent away to a state hospital, and the message to the Sisters is clear: Andy is never bothered again.
As other guards begin to come to him for financial help, Andy is given a makeshift office in the prison library to provide tax and financial services. His "clientele" grows to include the entire prison staff, guards from other prisons, and even Warden Norton himself. To keep Andy happy, the Warden provides him with a single cell and allows him to keep an unusual amount of contraband in his cell. Conspicuous amongst the contraband are Andy's posters of "fantasy girlies" - first Rita Hayworth, followed over time by Marilyn Monroe and then Raquel Welch. The Warden also permits Andy's letter-writing campaign on behalf of the prison library. Through Andy's budgeting and purchasing activities, the library is expanded and remodeled into the Brooks Hatlen Memorial Library, which was the "best prison library in New England". The Warden capitalizes on Andy's skills and devises a program to put prison inmates to work for local construction projects, exploiting the prisoners' free labor for his own personal profit, with Andy acting behind the scenes as a money launderer. Andy uses his knowledge of "the system" to create the false identity of Randall Stephens, which he uses as a straw man to hide the Warden's involvement.
In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy Williams enters Shawshank on a breaking and entering charge, and quickly becomes part of Red's and Andy's group of friends, with Andy helping him to pass the GED test. He learns of Andy's supposed crime and makes a shocking revelation: Elmo Blatch, one of his old cellmates, had gleefully described murdering two people who fit the description of Andy's wife and her lover, and how her "hotshot banker" husband got blamed for it. Andy hopes that he will be able to get a new trial with Tommy's help, and he approaches Warden Norton for advice and assistance. Fearing exposure of his illegal activities at Shawshank should Andy be set free, Norton sends him to solitary confinement and conspires to have Hadley shoot Tommy as an escapee. After Norton informs Andy of Tommy's death, Andy tries to refuse to launder any more funds for Norton. However, when Norton threatens Andy with the loss of his private cell, the loss of his protection against the "Sodomites", and the destruction of his beloved library (complete with a book burning), Andy relents, by all appearances a beaten man.When Andy is back in the prison yard, he tells Red that if he ever gets out of prison he should go to a specific hayfield near Buxton, Maine to find something that has been buried under a volcanic rock. The following morning, Andy is missing from his cell. In a fury over Andy's disappearance, the Warden throws one of Andy's rocks at the poster of Raquel Welch - and is stunned to see the rock tear through the poster, revealing a large hole that Andy had used to escape. In a flashback sequence, it is revealed that Andy spent years chipping away at the wall of his cell with his rock hammer, using the posters of Hayworth, Monroe and Welch to conceal it. After his escape, Andy assumes the identity of Randall Stephens and uses it to withdraw Warden Norton's laundered money - $370,000 worth (over $2.4 million in 2009 dollars). Cashier's checks in hand, Andy sends evidence of Norton's activities to a Portland newspaper. The morning the story runs, Byron Hadley is arrested and Warden Norton, besieged by police officers, commits suicide in his office.
The next year, 1967, Red is finally released on parole after serving 40 years at Shawshank. Red is afraid of "the outside", dreading living in fear, worried that he would end up committing suicide once outside of the prison's strict regime, as fellow prisoner Brooks Hatlen had done. Coincidentally, he's given the same room and the same job Hatlen had. But instead of committing suicide or committing another crime to be sent back, Red recalls his promise to Andy and heads to the field in Buxton that Andy told him about. He finds a small metal box containing money and a letter from Andy. In the letter, Andy reminds Red of Zihuatanejo before ending with a final message: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". Red then violates his parole and travels to Mexico, eventually reuniting with Andy in Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast. Both of them are elated and hug each other when they meet.
The film portrays Andy spending nearly two decades in Shawshank State Prison, a fictional penitentiary in Maine, and his friendship with Red, a fellow inmate. The Shawshank Redemption received favorable reviews from critics and has since enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home videotape, DVD and Blu-ray. It continues to be hailed by critics and audiences alike, 15 years after its initial release, and is ranked among the greatest films of all time.
p/s: These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized
