We had almost a month hiatus from our movie challenge due to school conflicts. We are now in fast mode, not too many weeks and MANY movies left on the list. I will be posting a lot more often now.
This is probably the first real reach out of my comfort zone with movies that Corey has picked.
It's about a guy who goes to prison for the murder of his wife and her golf pro "friend."
He gets sent to Shawshank for two life sentences.
He is a smart banker, no previous record, honest, straight up guy.
This movie is about his development through the quickly passing years of his sentence in prison with some really rough prisoners.
One of my favorite lines is when Tim Robbins claims innocence, Morgan Freeman says, "of course, we are all innocent here" or something to that idea.
He becomes friends with Morgan Freeman's character, a guy who "knows how to get things."
Anytime they interact in the movie is really good. Tim Robbins just doesn't fit in. But he finds his place as someone who is educated and ends up playing a vital part in helping the warden with some schemes.
This is the warden and he is evil.
There are many evil characters. The head guard guy is horrible. There is a group of guys in the prison called the "ladies" who contribute some extremely rough, crass, gut-wrenchingly horrible situations to the movie. (for anyone wondering, nothing visually graphic, just dialogue and implied, plus they are just gross!) There is a TON of prison language in this movie.
To be honest, if you took out the "ladies" storyline, I would give this movie a much higher rating. Probably a high 7/8.
As it is, I have to give it......a high 4 out of 10.
It upset me and I could hardly enjoy what was actually a decent storyline because of how awful that part was. In addition to the abusive bad language towards the prisoners.
I wouldn't watch it again.
For me, the memorable parts were overshadowed by the bad parts.
I will try to be fair to the movie. For a story set in a harsh prison in that time period, I am sure the language and situations and the abuse were very realistic. I am sure there are ways you could do a movie focusing on certain parts and leave out some of the situations, but portraying an accurate depiction of a prison the language was not excessive or gratuitous. It 100% fit the setting and characters.
In defense of my lack of enjoyment of the movie, I just do not find that setting to be enjoyable enough in the good part of the story to be able to appreciate the inclusion of all that "stuff."
I watched and enjoyed a tv show set in a prison. Prison Break had a fascinating puzzling storyline that unraveled. The storyline in that outweighed the implied prison situations and the rough stuff was a much smaller part of the overall story. Mostly because it was on television, haha, but I feel it did a good job of showing how bad prison could be without SO much of it being spelled out.
Maybe it's because I made Corey tell me what happened because I was scared of a movie based on a Stephen King book, ha ha. Maybe if the ending had been more of a surprise, it would have increased the appreciation of his journey. That really could have been a big part of it. To me, the ending was a tad bit anticlimactic. Plenty of people love this movie. I am not known as someone who tolerates intensity in movies very well. So there ya go.
It's similar to the idea of "The Count of Monte Cristo" and has a good "redeeming" ending for the good guys. But the bad guys were just too bad for me. I think also the fact that this was a believable story and setting, and knowing these kinds of things really happen makes it worse for me. I can much more easily tolerate crazy unbelievable things like dinosaurs, transformers, and space movies as far as things outside my comfort zone go. ha ha.
So, sorry, Corey. I didn't love it. But I did watch it. :)
He has since changed two choices on his original list, which I hate. The thing is, you never know what's going to bother me, I'm kind of weird about movies, which is why this is such an interesting summer experiment for us.
Tonight we watch my next choice.
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