Movie Speech: Shawshank Redemption

Morgan Freeman portrays Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding in the 1994 flick Shawshank Redemption, a story set around young Andy Dufresne, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1947 for the murder of his wife and her lover. Notwithstanding the grim life in Shawshank Prison and that he is innocent, Andy maintains hope and his dreams.

Red is a fellow inmate and the prison “fixer”. He is serving a life sentence for murder and at various parole hearings he tries to convince the Parole Board of his rehabilitation, his contrition, that he will not offend again and of his sincerity. Each time his parole form is stamped "Rejected".

In 1967 he comes up for parole again…

Interviewer: Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?

Red: Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.

Interviewer: Well, it means that you're ready to rejoin society...

Red: I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?

Interviewer: Well, are you?

Red: There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.

(Parole form is stamped “Approved”).