The Shawshank Redemption: Not a movie about the Holocaust

For the past 17 years, I had been under the impression that The Shawshank Redemption was a movie about the Holocaust. Apparently, because Shindler's List and The Shawshank Redeption both came out about the same year and I was only 9 at the time, I've been confused my entire life. How I was never corrected is incredible, but I must've always been with other ingrates who had never seen the movie either. Fortunately, I recently corrected the error of my ways.

There are some movies that are "classics" that I make a point to watch and are ultimately disappointed. Citizen Kane is probably the best example of this. Maybe I'm not cultured enough or don't understand cinematography, but I literally fell asleep watching Citizen Kane and the only reason I watched it in the first place is because I never understood what the hell my dad was talking about when he always said "Rosebud". (SPOILER ALERT: It's a freaking sled.)That being said, I was a bit reluctant to watch The Shawshank Redemption because most things that people constantly say are awesome aren't actually that awesome, they just don't want to be an outcast and say it sucks.

Luckily, The Shawshank Redemption IS that awesome and my belief in "classics" is restored!

So, this movie, it turns out, takes place in a prison. Not Nazi Germany. And the premise is that a successful banker is incorrectly accused of killing his cheating wife and he is sent to prison. All of the normal prison movie things that you think would happen, do happen. However, this is one of the few movies out there where things actually go the way you want them to go. It's awesome. Bad guys get beat downs and good guys get beer. I'm assuming I'm the only person left in America who had never seen this movie, so I won't bore you with the details.

I will just say that if you haven't seen The Shawshank Redemption (one of the 1% of Americans left), go find one of those old fashioned "movie stores" and rent it. Like now. (To those of you who don't know what a "movie store" is, it's this place where people used to go to borrow VHS(tapes) movies for certain period of time. You had to leave your couch to get movies and sometimes they were out of whatever it was you went to get! It was horrible!) You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll love Morgan Freeman even more than you already do(should).