karma-9

The Shawshank Redemption is one of the few movies adapted from books that turned out to be good .. or in, this case, brilliant.

Although the movie supposedly takes place somewhen in the 1950's, I can easily imagine it being transferred to today's time and standards. The thing that is most fascinating about is is that the directors [and writers, of course] didn't use extreme clichés - there's no black and white painting, just numerous shades of grey. Robbins and Freeman both are perfect for their roles, as are all of the supporting actors.

Finally, I can understand why a certain movies gets a high ranking.

I'll have to say it.. some books just shouldn't be adapted. While I personally am a big fan of Rice's novel, I think it would have been far better to leave it alone and *not* turn it into this horrid movie, considering that it is, undoubtedly, a book that is very difficult to adapt.

I find it sad that 11 years-old Kirsten Dunst could "outact" three men in their thirties. While Cruise at least has some strong parts in the film, Pitt obviously just walks through it sighing. His sullen performance, along with the really useless comments from the off were simply and painfully boring. Banderas, while in other films a rather good actor, could be left out completely in Interview. The only thing he did was confuse me. Other parts, like Stephen Rea's and Slater's weren't developed enough to add anything to the movie, and Pitt's sudden disappearance for half of the movie didn't leave a good impression on me either.

Another thing that I felt was completely missing in this movie was the part of the victim. The only victims we were showed were either people that had no effect on the way the movie would take whatsoever, or villains, aristocrats that killed their former life partners and animals.

And lastly, who was responsible for Pitt's and Banderas' horrible hair-do??

The plot has been used over and over again, both before and thereafter. The only thing that's new is all the false information about computers. Sandra Bullock was ok at best. Jeremy Northam was just plain annoying. I'm still looking for a person as helpful as the computer nerd on IRC.