The Best Movie of All-Time, ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ Is a Streaming for Free on Pluto TV

The greatest movie ever made (at least, according to IMDb) is now streaming for free! The mantle of being the “greatest movie ever made” is, obviously, a subjective one. You might enjoy the classics like Jaws or The Godfather, or maybe you prefer a modern hit, like Baby Driver or The Dark Knight. Your tastes may even veer on the pretentious side, by naming The Seventh Seal or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as your favorite. But, sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes try to make the subjective objective through audience rankings. According to audience rankings on the former site, the greatest movie of all time is (deservedly, in this writer’s opinion), none other than The Shawshank Redemption, and it just landed on free streaming.

The Shawshank Redemption is now streaming for free on Pluto TV. The classic adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, landed on the free streaming platform on December 1, alongside over 200 other movies which can all be streamed for free. The Shawshank Redemption should need little introduction given how beloved the film is. Frank Darabondt directed the movie, which starred Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne. After being wrongly locked up in Shawshank Prison for his wife’s murder, Dufresne adapts to life inside the clink, but the hope of escape never leaves his mind. The official synopsis reads:

“Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison for the murders of his wife and her lover and is sentenced to a tough prison. However, only Andy knows he didn’t commit the crimes. While there, he forms a friendship with Red (Morgan Freeman), experiences brutality of prison life, adapts, helps the warden, etc., all in 19 years.”

Alongside Robbins, The Shawshank Redemption also starred Morgan Freeman, Clancy Brown, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore. To call The Shawshank Redemption an acclaimed movie would be a drastic understatement. The film holds a great 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a near-perfect audience score of 98% (from over 250,000 reviews). But, most impressively, it is the highest rated movie of all time on IMDb, with a score of 9.3.

What Does Stephen King Think of ‘The Shawshank Redemption’

Tim Robbins & Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption

Columbia Pictures

Stephen King adaptations tend to get more things wrong than they do right. For every major hit like The Long Walk, there are countless more failures, like Pet Semetary and the remake of Carrie. But, even Stephen King absolutely adores The Shawshank Redemption; not just as an adaptation of his work, but as a piece of cinema.

“When I first saw it, I realized he’d made not just one of the best movies ever done from my work, but a potential movie classic,” King said, writing for The Academy in 2014. “That turned out to be the case, but he continued working almost up to the moment the film was released.”