The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 107

ftj MOVIES Tim bobbins' spirit lives in left field By Glenn Lovell SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS i Jr 7 r7 A vl I the gangly Jimmy Stewart physique. He's a sort of brainy Everyman whose filmography reads like a cultist's wish list. Besides Altman's Short Cuts and The Player, Robbins has starred in Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, the Coen brothers' Hudsucker Proxy, Tony Bill's Five Corners, Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder and that definitive MTV spoof no one saw, Tape-heads. And don't forget Bob Roberts, the political satire with which Robbins made his head-turning TORONTO There are usually two paths to consider, the primrose one and the rocky. You can either go with the current or fight it.

You can do something loony and out there, like Bull Durham, or something more sullen and conventional, like Eight Men Out. It all comes down to choices, reckons Tim Robbins, appear PHOTOCASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT ing recently at the Toronto International Film Festival to help sell his new vehicle, an old-fashioned prison picture with the unlikely title The Shawshank Redemption. And Robbins, whose credits range from the embarrassing (Howard the directorial debut. He played a folk-singing demagogue in that one. Upcoming for the actor are 1Q, a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Walter Matthau as Einstein, and another Altman, Pret-a-Porter.

In the latter, he plays a sportswriter covering a murder at a Paris Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins become friends in 'Shawshank Captivating 'Shawshank' rises above prison cliches Robbins By Jay Boyar REVIEW SENTINEL MOVIE CRITIC Duck) to the sublime (Robert Altaian's The Player), already has made his share of left-field choices. "I'm always at a crossroads," he says. "Will it be this big commercial thing, or will it be this thing that's going to pay me an eighth of what I can make? You say, 'I'll go with that one. I have enough But the small one leads to something huge. "I don't have a master plan.

I don't know that I've made all the right decisions, but I'm not complaining, and I'm certainly very comfortable where I am." That's an understatement. Discerning filmmakers can't get enough of Robbins, 35, the guy with the goofy smile and fashion show. He becomes romantically involved with Julia Roberts. Forget about content, Robbins muses, those titles alone are enough to choke your average filmgoer. "Shawshank Redemption Hudsucker Proxy Pret-a-Porter.

What is it about me and these titles," he says, wincing. Shawshank, taken from a Stephen King novella, is Robbins' bid for a more mainstream acceptance. It comes off as a Fugitive for eggheads. He plays a banker who survives by his wits when imprisoned for his wife's murder. He co-stars with See ROBBINS, Page 22 'The Shawshank Redemption' Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, James Whitmore.

Director and screenwriter: Frank Darabont. Cinematographer: Roger Deakins. Running time: 2 hours, 22 minutes. Industry rating: (restricted). Parents' guide: Adult themes, profanity, violence, very brief nudity.

pro with whom she had been sleeping. Andy winds up at Shawshank State Prison, a maximum-security institution in the state of Maine. The film tells the story of how his indomitable spirit and intelligence help him to survive those soul-deadening circumstances. With material like this, there's a terrible potential for sentimentality. Helping to keep things honest is the movie's narrator, the tough, levelheaded Red Redding a prisoner with outside connections who takes a liking to our hero.

Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy), who plays Red, narrates the movie so dryly that he might almost be talking about the weather. His delivery is so unemphatic that you don't feel coerced into experiencing the emotions that you do. As Andy, Tim Robbins (The Player) projects a cold, slightly out-of-it personality. This ap To call a prison picture captivating isn't necessarily a compliment. But in the case of The Shawshank Redemption, it definitely is.

In many ways, the new film (which opens locally today) is rather old-fashioned. In fact, most of its characters have equivalents in films from Bird-man of Akatraz (1962) to Bru-baker (1980) to Weeds (1987). The hero, for example, is a strong-willed prisoner who naturally claims to have been wrongly accused. Other characters include the well-connected prisoner who can get his hands on almost anything for a price, the sadistic prisoners, the even more sadistic guards, the corrupt warden and on and on. What makes this all seem fresh and, yes, captivating is the film's unusual tone.

The Movie shows other side of Stephen King's writing Reviewing key. excellent, good, average, poor, awful men one, a soft-spoken Maine banker who is convicted of a double murder and the other a life-termer at Shawshank State Prison in Maine. "King writes people so well, and he's so good with narrative," says Darabont, who adapted a King short story for the 1983 PBS short A Woman in the Room. "He tells a great story, and what I found compelling about this one was'lhe underlying message about the human spirit It gives you something to think about" i People who think of Stephen King only as a horror writer may be surprised to learn that The Shawshank Redemption is based on a King work. Writerdirector Frank Darabont adapted his screenplay from the King novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which appeared in the author's 1982 best seller Different Seasons.

The same book also produced the 1986 hit film Stand by Me. The new film follows the relationship between two proach to the character, while anything but pushy, makes you eager to discover more about him. Of the cast members, the one who comes closest to a naked plea for sympathy is James Whitmore, who plays the prison librarian an old-timer who has become so institutionalized that he can no longer imagine any other way of life. Yet even Whitmore achieves a certain emotional remove a distance that helps to preserve the movie's fairy-tale atmosphere. The Shawshank Redemption (cumbersome ti- Shawshank Redemption is both resigned and inspirational, grittily realistic and vaguely surreal, matter-of-fact and operatic.

Somehow, these opposites are combined into a remarkably smooth and lyrical composition. It's a bit of a fairy tale, really, a terrific yarn spun by a master storyteller. Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, the story begins in the mid-1940s and spans two decades. The plot is set in motion when a voune bank executive named Andy Dufresne is given back-to-back life sentences for the murder of Jiis unfaithful wife and the" golf SHAnSrJANK, Fuge22.