The Shawshank Redemption is a movie based on Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Below are the main characters from the movie.

Warning: Some of the movie plot is revealed below

Andy Dufresne

Andy Dufresne is the primary character of the story. Andy arrives at Shawshank Prison in 1947, after being convicted of killing his wife and her lover. Unlike most of the inmates at Shawshank, Andy is innocent. Andy settles into his two consecutive life sentences. He befriends Red (see below) and several other inmates. Andy has a passion for rocks, and Red gets him a rock hammer. Andy uses the rock hammer to shape himself the pieces of a chess set. Whilst carving his name onto the wall of his cell Andy realizes that the walls of the prison are not so strong as one would think. During his 19 years at the prison Andy cuts a tunnel through his cell wall, onto the outside. After Warden Norton removes Tommy from the prison, and also any chance of Andy being proven innocent, Andy makes his escape from Shawshank. Once on the outside Andy uses Norton's embezzled funds to make a new life for himself. With his new identify he settles in Mexico.

After more than 10 years since the release of The Shawshank Redemption movie the cast and crew look back at the success of the movie.

The Shawshank Redemption movie has consistently been voted as one of the most popular movies in opinion polls. Below are a summary of the the movies position in many opinion polls

• The Internet Movie Database considers The Shawshank Redemption as one of the greatest movies of all time. It is one of the only two movies with a 9.0 average rating. The Godfather is the other.
• The Shawshank Redemption has at times been voted the greatest movie of all time in the IMDB and Yahoo polls.

Whilst The Shawshank Redemption is a beautifully made movie, there are a few mistakes. Most are listed below.

• The Mansfield State Reformatory in Ohio was used for the exterior shots.  However the prison is now derelict and improvements had to be made prior to shooting.  The interior shots were done on a stage as it was cheaper to do so than to renovate the interior of Mansfield prison.
• All scenes containing Brook’s crow were monitored by the American Humane Association.  The American Humane Association objected to the feeding of a live maggot to the crow during a scene, as they considered it cruel to the maggot.  A maggot that had died from natural causes was found to complete the scene.