The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - 44 corrections

Directed by Frank Darabont, starring Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins, Bob Gunton, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, William Sadler (add more)

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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Entry When they are doing income tax returns, Red makes reference to the April 15 deadline, which back then was March 15th. [I can't tell exactly what year that Red makes this reference from the movie. Which is important because the tax code changed the deadline from March 15 to April 15 in 1954. Andy entered the prison in 1947 and escaped in 1966. Not knowing exactly when it occurred, it is entirely plausible, since Andy was doing income taxes until he escaped, that Red's statement would be true.]
Corrected by Zwn Annwn Time
Entry In the scene where Warden Norton is talking to Tommy, he offers a cigarette to Tommy but is not smoking one himself. At the end of the conversation, he drops a partially-smoked cigarette and crushes it out, then walks away. It isn't Tommy's cigarette, because when Tommy is lying on the ground, you can see his cigarette beside his right hand. [The warden is smoking a cigarette. He has the cigarette in his mouth when he approaches Tommy and takes it out after taking a drag and exhaling.]
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Entry I believe this has already been alluded to, but I'd like to clarify a point. Red says that Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards - 'just shy of half a mile'. 500 yards is far less than half a mile; in fact, it's less than a third of a mile. But what it *is*, is just shy of half a *kilometer*. Which may be what King was thinking of when he wrote the book. [This is a mechanism for submitting mistakes, not making clarifications regarding existing errors.]
Corrected by Tailkinker Time
Entry When Andy escapes from Shawshank, and we see the shot when he first comes out of the sewer pipe, watch his bag that he tied to his ankle. It appears to float. Considering that Andy packed up his Stone Chess set in this bag, it's very unlikely that the bag would float even in the slightest. [Depends on how much air was trapped within the bag and how dense the sewer pipe's contents were. That wasn't just water, you know.]
Corrected by Phixius Time
Entry When Red finds the metal box in the field, there has been enough time pass for seasons to change. In Maine this means rain, snow and melting snow. How that metal box with one loosely wrapped plastic bag kept all the papers perfectly dry is not easy to believe. Even one year of seasons would cause it to look much less pristine than it looks when Red opens it. [The package was wrapped in thick plastic. It was protected from the elements quite well and as such would still appear pristine, even after a number of months.]
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Entry In the scene where Warden Norton is loading his pistol, as he dumps out the bullets and loads them the primers are dimpled. Unfired bullets would not have the dimples from the gun's hammer. [Home made reloads would, of course.]
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Entry My instructor brought this up in my psychology class. Brooks' suicide scene is completely unrealistic. The fall that resulted when he kicked the chair out from under him was nowhere near long enough to break his neck, therefore, he strangled to death. However, when one strangles to death by hanging, the limbs are flailing wildly and convulsions usually occur. Brooks' feet barely twitch. [Brooks was a very old man. His bones were very weak and brittle, as most geriatrics' bones are. This naturally occurring problem would have been augmented by the very poor nutrition he would have received while in prison. It is entirely plausible for a short fall such as this one to have resulted in a broken neck with this particular individual.]
Corrected by Phixius Time
Entry When Andy is escaping and breaks a hole in the sewer pipe, the sewage and water erupt out of the pipe. After that, the top inside part of the pipe should have been wet. But when he uses his flashlight to look inside, that section of the pipe is dry. [It is wet.]
Corrected by AdmRose Time
Entry When Andy crawls through the pipe he has the warden's clothes in a bag attached to his feet. When he emerges from the other end of the pipe, wades through the stream and pulls his clothes off there is no sign of the bag. [The bag is there when he comes out of the pipe and it is being dragged behind him the entire time in this scene.]
Corrected by Lummie Time
Entry Andy's escape is made by tunneling, yet his cell is on the second story of the prison and there are others cells to the right of his. Therefore, by tunneling into the wall, the only thing that would happen is that he would end up in the next guy's cell. [Andy's cell is the last on the row. There are only cells to one side (left as you're facing it from outside). Andy tunnels through the solid wall opposite the row of cells (right as you're facing it from outside).]
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Entry At the end of the film, when he is off to find Andy, Red expresses the belief that the authorities won't care all that much about him breaking the conditions of his parole. He could not be more wrong. In the US in the Forties he would be considered an escaped prisoner if he broke his parole, and considering he was inside for murder he would be regarded as dangerous. Crossing a State line would be a federal offence, bringing the FBI into play. In short, every law enforcement agency in the country is going to be on the lookout for him, and when he tries to cross the border into Mexico he'll be arrested on multiple charges. [What Red means, is not that they won't be looking for him, but that they will put in less of an effort in tracking him down than, say, a twenty-five year old serial killer. He is after all an old man who has done his time for one single offense, and had expressed sincere regret for it. The FBI would know of him, sure, but he would not rank high on their priority list. As for crossing the Mexican border, well, hundreds of people cross it undetected every day (in the opposite direction). It is not exactly air-tight. Besides, the escape takes place in the '60s, not the Forties.]
Corrected by Twotall Time
Entry When Andy is escaping, he uses a large rock to bust through the sewage pipe. He strikes the pipe three times with the rock, and seemingly breaks through. It seems near impossible that any form of rock, especially only swung three times, can bust through what appeared to be a solid metal drainage pipe. Even if that were possible, it seems even more unlikely Andy could then try to shape a hole big enough for him to slip through into the pipe, without wasting too much more time, or being heard. [You can tell by then sound the rock makes when it hits the pipe that the pipe is not metal but ceramic. That is why it was relatively easy for Andy to break through them to escape.]
Corrected by Guy Brigman Time
Entry The poster that Andy has of Raquel Welsh, at the time of his escape in 1966, is from the movie "One Million Years B.C." which was not released until 1967. [The Hammer film "One Million Years B.C." was released in 1966, not 1967. As a publicity stunt the poster was released well in advance of the film's premiere. See http://lavender.fortunecity.com/judidench/584/onemilli3.html, amongst others.]
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Entry It's hard to believe that Andy wouldn't have been caught in the act while tunneling through the wall. Even if he was able to time the prison guards' nightly head count inspections to avoid detection, any convict in one of the cells on the opposite tier would have been able to see directly into Andy's cell. It stretches the imagination to think that Andy wouldn't have been seen by an "enemy" convict on the opposite tier. [Throughout the scenes at night, the cells are very dark. As it took him over 20 years to make the tunnel, I dont think its hard to assume that another convict would see him as they never reported him in that space of time. In some of the night scenes when some of the shots are taken from the cells its pitch black in the other cells so most would never see him anyway. With the guards, he didn't have the head check that night. Andy was working late and was buzzed in later on.]
Corrected by Lummie Time
Entry It's unlikely that raw sewage would have been permitted to flow directly from the prison into a creek, even in a rural Maine setting. This prison would have been equipped with a rudimentary sewage treatment system of some kind, such as a septic system. The screenplay had to omit the septic system since you can't crawl through it to your freedom. [I hate to admit it, but in the rural area in which I grew up in the 1970s (ie after the time frame of this film) it was still common practice to send untreated sewage straight to the nearest ocean-bound waterway, and that was from single dwelling homes, not large (and apparently very old) institutions such as Shawshank, for which a septic tank would have to be enormous.]
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Entry Towards the end of the movie when Andy is escaping, he breaks open a sewage pipe and is covered with its contents. It is physically impossible for the sewage to shoot out of the break like it did. In order for that to happen there has to be pressure. But there is none there, because the end he crawls out of is in the open air. [The "Red" character told us that the sewer pipe Andy crawled through was 500 yards long. In order to push a fluid through a 500 yard pipe, you need pressure. Gravity alone is not enough. In engineering terms, you need an energy source (a pump) to overcome the friction head that the walls of the 500 yard long pipe impose on the sewage. It's plausible that Andy could hear the prison's sewage pump from his cell since his cell was located adjacent to the main outflow pipe. Maybe he was able to time when the pump was on and off so he wouldn't drown in sewage as he crawled to freedom.]
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Entry Andy asks a bank clerk to put an envelope into their outgoing mail. This envelope contains all information about the criminal goings-on at Shawshank and is addressed to a newspaper. When Norton sees the headline in the paper, which could be, at best, two days later, he opens the safe to find the rock hammer hidden in Andy's bible. It's unimaginable that he would have waited for so long after Andy's escape to check the contents of the safe. [The warden certainly did check the safe as soon as Andy escaped but only to confirm that the contents were still there. It was only once he saw the headline that he really looked inside the book.]
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Entry When Red goes to the Mexican border the bus is totally empty on the right side, while on the left side (the hot, sunny side) there's a passenger behind every window. [A slightly unusual choice but hardly a movie mistake. It's not a mistake for people to want to sit in the sun and it's safe to assume the position of the sun with respect to the bus would change during the journey so maybe they were on the shady side at the start.]
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Entry When Andy escapes during a thunderstorm every lightning strike, be it heard close or distant, is accompanied by its thunder exactly at the very moment it strikes. [I've watched this scene again and it's clear that the thunder storm is right overhead so that the thunder and lightening are coincident. There may be an impression that it's sometimes close and sometimes distant simply because it's not always the same volume which is normal.]
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Entry At the end when Andy escapes, he is wearing the warden's shoes and suit shirt, which fit him perfectly. It is obvious neither would fit a man of Andy's frame. [We see him wearing the wardens shoes and shirt in the prison one time. He only needs them to avoid suspicion once he gets to town. He then had enough time to buy better fitting stuff before visiting the banks.]
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