Andy Dufresne is a young and successful banker whose life changes drastically when he is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lover. Set in the 1940’s, the film shows how Andy, with the help of his friend Red, the prison entrepreneur, turns out to be a most unconventional prisoner.
During the first night, the chief guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), savagely beats a newly arrived inmate because of his crying and hysterics. The inmate later dies in the infirmary because the prison doctor had left for the night. Meanwhile Andy remained steadfast and composed. Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman), also known as Red, bet against others that Andy would be the one to break down first and loses a considerable amount of cash.
About a month later, Andy approaches Red, who runs contraband inside the walls of Shawshank. He asks if Red could find him a rock hammer, an instrument he claims is necessary for his hobby of rock collecting and sculpting. Though other prisoners consider Andy “a really cold fish”, Red sees something in Andy, and likes him from the start. Red believes Andy intends to use the hammer to engineer his escape in the future but when the tool arrived and he saw how small it was, Red put aside the thought that Andy could ever use it to dig his way out of prison.
Over the first two years of his incarceration, Andy works in the prison laundry. He attracts attention from “the Sisters”, a group of prisoners who sexually assault other prisoners. Though he persistently resists and fights them, Andy is beaten and raped on a regular basis.
Red pulls some strings, and gets Andy and a few of their mutual friends a break by getting them all on a work detail tarring the roof of one of the prison’s buildings. During the job Andy overhears Hadley complaining about having to pay taxes for an upcoming inheritance. Using his expertise as a banker, Andy lets Hadley know how he could shelter his money from the IRS, turning it into a one-time gift for his wife. He said he’d assist in exchange for some cold beers for his fellow inmates while on the tarring job. Though he at first threatens to throw Andy off the roof, Hadley, the most brutal guard in the prison, agrees, providing the men with cold beer before the job is finished. Red remarks that Andy may have engineered the privilege to build favor with the prison guards as much as with his fellow inmates, but Red also thinks Andy did it simply to “feel free.”
While watching a movie, Andy demands Red “Rita Hayworth”. Soon, after asking Red for “Rita Hayworth”, Andy once more encountered the Sisters and is brutally beaten, putting him in the infirmary for a month. Boggs, the leader of the Sisters, spends a week in solitary. When he comes out, he finds Hadley and his men waiting in his cell. They beat him so badly he’s left paralyzed, transferred to a prison hospital upstate, and the Sisters never bothered Andy again. When Andy got out of the infirmary, he finds a bunch of rocks and a poster of Rita Hayworth in his cell: presents from Red and his buddies.
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