One of my favorite films, The Shawshank Redemption, is often considered one of the greatest evermade, but a great deal of Redhawks have not yet watched the 1994 film. One of these students, junior Wingspan Editor Caroline Grace Caruso, has been publishing movie reviews to Wingspan all year, but now, she will be reviewing one herself, offering her thoughts on watching the film for the first time.

“Going into the movie, I didn’t really know what it was about,” Caruso said. “I had been recommended it by a friend, and I was just really curious. From the opening scene, right away you could tell the movie had an almost dark feel to it, but then at the end of the movie, all of a sudden, there was a turning point. Things started happening so fast. It blew my mind, and it was amazing.”

After navigating all the twists and turns the film had to offer, Caruso was more than satisfied with the film’s ending.

“I won’t spoil it,” Caruso said. “But I will say it ended really well. Being able to see a happy ending at the end was really rewarding. It was quite different from what the beginning of the movie depicted.”

While the film did have a happy ending, Caruso won’t forget the film’s depiction of a prisoner who, after being released, struggles to adjust to the outside world after being imprisoned for fifty years.

“I didn’t really consider their perspective,” Caruso said. “Prison is all they know, and when they get out into the real world, it’s so different. The movie just did a good job at telling that narrative, and it stuck with me.”

However calling it one of the greatest movies ever, isn’t a proclamation Caruso is willing to make.

“There are so many different genres of cinema that just appeal to different audiences,” Caruso said. “It really depends on what you’re looking for because it’s so subjective. Personally, I think that it was just overall a great movie, and I would recommend it to a lot of people.”