Andy (Tim Robbins)’s Timeline and Summary
- Andy Dufresne, a talented banker, is found guilty of murdering his wife and her lover, and is sentenced to two life sentences at Shawshank Prison.
- Andy's a bit of an introvert, so it takes a little time for him to make some friends, but eventually he buddies up to Red and a few of the other inmates. Even in the big house they've got their "cliques."
- Andy runs into a bit of trouble with one of the inmates named Bogs, who wants to…change their relationship status, and not on Facebook.
- It's looking like things are going to keep getting tougher for Andy…until he happens to overhear the captain of the guards discussing a financial issue, and offers to lend his expertise to help him out of a pinch.
- Suddenly, he's in tight with the boys in charge. He's the H&R Block of the cell block, and they don't like the idea of Bogs messing up their prized financial advisor. Buh-bye, Bogs.
- Unbeknownst to the guards, the inmates, and even us, Andy's been chipping away at his cell wall all this time, digging himself a tunnel with an itty-bitty rock hammer. He covers up his progress with posters of scantily clad movie goddesses, which he obtains from Red. Who could have known what was going on behind those posters? To any outside eyes, it appeared that Raquel Welch was hiding very little…
- A new inmate, Tommy, arrives at the prison, and Andy learns that he might be able to provide some testimony that could prove his innocence and free him from Shawshank. Unfortunately, the warden, who's been having Andy cook his books for the past couple of decades, isn't hot on the idea, so he has Tommy executed. Meaning Andy's back to Plan B—the tunnel thing.
- Finally, after twenty years of preparation, Andy decides tonight's the night. He switches out the warden's files with some bogus ones that got locked in the safe, then waits for lights out, crawls through a sewer full of…well, we don't even want to think about it…and emerges on the other side.
- It isn't until the next morning that the warden realizes he's missing.
- Andy strolls into a bank early the next morning and withdraws several hundred thousands of dollars that he's been filtering into the account of a made-up person over the years, then absconds with the funds to a beach town in Mexico, where he gets his own boat and lives out the rest of his days (we're assuming) in relative peace and happiness. Maybe he even gets to open that frozen yogurt shop he always dreamed of running.
- Fine, so we invented the bit about the frozen yogurt. What, Andy's the only one who gets to make stuff up?