That being said, one issue I had with the movie is aside from Andys bullies in the beginning, none of the prisoners are portrayed as being, well, prisoners. They all seem like good ol boys doing time together, so much so that its hard to imagine that they committed crimes to be in prison for decades.
I mean think about it, Andy was in prison for 16 years before escaping, and all his friends were seasoned veterans when he got there, which means they were serving 20 to as many as 50 year sentences in Brooks case, thats pretty serious ass time. Youd think theyd have at least SOME hardened criminal vibe to them.
Oh yeah, that's another glaring issue the movie has. It's at least understandable with Ellis & Brooks since the former apparently did his crime as a stupid, impulsive, hotheaded teen & the latter was very old, had been long-jailbroken & still showed signs of severe instability near the end of his sentence, but besides the rapist & his gang, Andy's wife's actual murderer, and the prisoners' behavior at the very beginning of the movie, almost every speaking prisoner character in the movie was characterized as if they were no less falsely-convicted than Andy. I mean, I know, given the film's upbeat tone (in spite of dark undertones), the characters had to be at least reasonably sympathetic, but many of the actually-guilty characters came off as sympathetic to the point where the movie required considerable suspension of disbelief. ---