Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 23

Friday. October 7. 1994 B-7 MOVIES jStar-Eullctin Vulnerable quality suits Eiis role 1 The Shawshank Redemption Rated V4 Opens today at Waikiki 2. A. if drugs should be legalized.

"I talked to some guards and I thought they would be Republican conservatives. But they told me they thought there was too much crime, that kids who had either sold or bought drugs one time were being thrown in jail with hardened criminals. The people the guards really resent are politicians." Robbins also went to a zoo to study animals, noting their "trapped sadness but also a rage there. I learned that you never show your emotions in prison. If you wear them on your sleeve, it costs you." One of the best things about acting, says Robbins, is the accessibility of people he might otherwise never have met.

They're really honest, too. I'm not their boss and I'm not their buddy so they feel they can tell me things." says. "I'm far from innocent" But that is precisely what he exudes in his new film "The Shawshank Redemption." In "Shawshank," a prison drama about hope and deliverance co-starring Morgan Freeman, Robbins is cast as a banker wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. "I've been in so many films with cynical endings," says the star of The Player" and "Bob Roberts." "And they always worked for what they were. "But this script was so exhilarating and uplifting at the end, uplifting without being hokum.

It's a movie where what is unspoken is important." Filmed at the shuttered Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, the film directed and scripted by Frank Darabont from a novella by Stephen King taught Robbins something he didn't suspect that prison guards think ByJovceJ.Persico NewhouM Newt Service NEW YORK Somewhere between being a movie star and being a plain, old-fashioned celebrity lies Tim Robbins. An outspoken political animal who has a thirst for live theater and a penchant for avoiding stereotyping, he has ail-American, boyish good looks that mask a more bohemian background; he grew up in Greenwich Village the son of Highwayman folk singer Gil Robbins. Most often he is cast as an innocent, a character who must overcome circumstance to reach his destiny in such films as "The Hud-sucker Proxy," "Jacob's Ladder" and "Miss Firecracker." Dimples appear in Robbins' face along with a smile when he's reminded that he suggests vulnerability on screen. "I grew up in New York," he Tim Robbins: "This script was so exhilarating and uplifting 'Shavshank' redeemed by its two stars By William Arnold Seattle Poit-lntclligencer THE acting is so strong, so seductive in The Shawshank Redemption" that you almost don't notice this epic prison drama isn't all that good. The stars rating these high marks are Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and their vehicle is a very loose adaptation of a very; atypical Stephen King novella, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption." Freeman plays Red, an old con doing a life stretch in Maine's harrowingly brutal Shawshank State Prison.

He's the institution's dog-robber the guy who, for a price, can get the other cons anything they need from the outside. 1 Robbins is Andy, a mild-mannered banker convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. He catches Red's admiring eye for the stoical dignity he shows during his first night in prison, in 1948. As narrated by Red, the story chronicles Andy's prison life for the next 21 years, and it's mostly hard time: a succession of beat-ings, sojourns in solitary confinement and repeated homosexual rapes until he finally finds a way to use his business skills to make; himself indispensable to the crooked prison administration. It also tells the more inspiration-al story of the growing friendship between the two lifers and of the positive, consciousness-raising effect Andy's quiet persistence has on Red and other inmates.

The movie is fueled by two winning performances from these two immensely likable actors: You'd have to be hard-hearted not to respond on some level to their platonic love story, and not be moved by the film's celebration of the endurance of the human spirit "Shawshank" also scores points as a horror story. Even with no spooks, it's as scary as any King adaptation with an absolutely got hie setting and a chilling performance from Bob Gunton as the monstrous and hypocritical prison warden. And yet the movie also reflects the inexperience of its first-time writer-director, Frank Darabont It constantly, blatantly robs other, better prison movies "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Cool Hand Luke" as it works toward a sell-out, happy ending. Darabont's script is also drastically over-narrated, filled with story holes and improbabilities too numerous to mention, and utterly predictable: It telegraphs its plot movements every step of the way. The movie is also just too brutal for its own good.

Sure, this prison is tough, but depicting it as Auschwitz with ail-powerful guards casually murdering inmates, and no one on the staff showing spark of humanity in more than two decades is heavy-handed and exploitative. By dehumanizing everyone connected to this institution, the movie dehumanizes itself. When it is not overly brutal, it is maudlin. Freeman's narration becomes a string of cliches and psycho-babble man has his breaking that seem to come from a clinical psychologist instead of a hardened old con. In another scene, James Whit-more in an otherwise good performance as a convict imprisoned so long he doesn't want to be released takes his own life in a drawn-out, self-pitying sequence.

And the film's big emotional moment Andy defiantly playing a Mozart opera over the prison: intercom system, lifting the spirits of the cons with its exquisite beauty is a direct steal from II I MOTE! )1 PRESENTS THE 17th ANNUAL Bring this coupon in and get yourself a Cattle Company Top Sirloin Steak and a plump, steaming lobster tail, a big ol' baked potato, and all the salad and hot bread you can eat. DA CAE SHOW $31 Light a fire under yourself; this deal ends October 27. BENEFIT FOR THE EASTER SEAL SOCIETY OF HAWAII At The Blaisdell Exhibition Hall FRI. OCT. 7-6 PM -11PM i SAT.

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