The Shawshank Redemption

(Warner Home Video, 10.5.2004)

If you don't love The Shawshank Redemption, you almost certainly respect it. It's one of the most beloved movies in recent history, by my sights, and you'd be hard pressed to find a person who hasn't seen it. And now comes a DVD that pays appropriate tribute, with a great-looking transfer.

The extras are fulfilling, not overwhelming or superfluous. They provide mostly captivating insights into both the making of the movie and how and why it has subsequently become nearly ubiquitous.

The first disc is accompanied by writer-director Frank Darabont's commentary track. He talks about (a) location filming in Ohio, (b) writing the screenplay in eight weeks, (c) the film's difficult title (which started out as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, (d) finding inspiration in Goodfellas, (e)temp scores, (f) the lack of deleted scenes, (g) expanding on the character of Brooks (who is barely mentioned in Stephen King's novella), (h) other changes he made while writing, and much, much more.

The package also includes a pair of documentaries. The first, "Hope Springs Eternal: A Look Back at The Shawshank Redemption, is a standard making-of thing, 30 minutes long and composed of interviews with the cast and crew, including Darabont, Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, novella author Stephen King and composer Thomas Newman.

The second is titled Shawshank: The Redeeming Feature, which is 47 minutes long and hosted by a British gentleman named Mark Kermode. It basically tries to answer the question, "What's so great about this movie?" Respondents incluce cast and crew members, film critics, regular viewers, and former inmates of the prison where filming took place.

We're told that Castle Rock executives insisted on the two leads (Robbins, Freeman) meeting on the beach at the end, which is not how the novella concludes.

The strange audio clips with Average Joe's proclaiming their love for the movie are a little odd and could have been discarded. The same can be said of the extremely corny discussion that examines the religious meaning people find in the movie.

There's also a 41-minute "Charlie Rose Show" interview with Darabont, Robbins and Freeman; a comic spoof entitled The Sharktank Redemption, a stills gallery and storyboards.

The audio and visual presentation are both excellent. The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 ratio, and a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. -- Paul Doro