20 Most Inspiring Movies Of All-Time
2. The Shawshank Redemption
This is a film which started as nothing. A box office flop starring two actors who would probably go down as nearly men and a first-time director who would now amount to nothing. Since 1994 though, the fans, not Hollywood, have decided that this is a film that would continue to have a life and rise to become one of the most beloved movies of the past thirty years.
It currently stands at Number One of IMDBs Top 250 list, sitting above the two Godfather films, The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction. Praise indeed. The film centres on the friendship between wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne, sentenced for allegedly murdering his wife, and long-hauler Ellis Red Redding, a man who can get things in prison and has settled with his lot in life.
After several brutal beatings, Andy is transferred to the prison library and, over time, begins managing the finances of the prison staff. When another inmate tells Andy that a man at another prison has admitted to murdering his wife, Andy is distraught to find the Warden refuses to listen and places him in solitary confinement.
It is now that Red can see his once positive friend has lost the will to live but one day, after roll call, Andy doesn't appear and, on inspection of his cell, a huge tunnel is discovered that Andy has spent decades making. In itself, any plot synopsis will not give true justice to such an uplifting film. Like any inspirational movie, the characters need to get beaten down and Andy Dufresne suffers such brutal beatings and punishments its hard to work out why he doesn't give up, certainly when old timers like Brooks soon commit suicide when released.
Andy has a dream though, to live on the beach of Zihuatanejo and when a newly released Red catches us with him, the power of friendship and hope are never better realised than with the two old friends meeting on the beach as the camera pulls away. A hard yet heart-warming classic.