I watched this movie the other night and am confused on how Andy escapes through the tunnel. His cell is on the end, and the tunnel he creates is in the direction of the next cell over. Wouldn't the tunnel lead to the next cell, or was there enough room for a gap in between them?

I should watch that part of the movie before answering this, but I think you have your directions mixed up. If I recall, his cell is the last on on the right when looking at it from the outside. The hole he made is on the right side of the cell (again, looking from the outside in) and therefore would also be at the end.

I would have to agree with DD, I did always have a problem though, with the fact that he was able to break through, what appeared to be thick steel pipe with a stone. Movie magic I guess.

Ok, I watched it again. I guess I wasn't paying too much attention, one of the shots shows the warden from his side which probably threw me off. That, and I think he was in another cell earlier in the movie with a poster on the right side of the wall.

It almost certainly would have been an iron pipe, and it was a really old iron pipe.

That may or may not make it less implausible. Just thought I'd mention it.

Forget about the pipe, how could he crawl that far through a sewage pipe without suffocating?

The sewer gases surely would have killed anyone fairly quickly.

Bear in mind that Stephen King's stories are character driven not plot driven. You can pick apart just about any King story and find gaping holes in logic.

Having worked construction and broken many a water main, trust me that it's not that hard.

OK, I remember one of the lines from the movie referred to
"time and pressure". Who's to say that Andy had not been down by the pipe before and "prepped" the area? BigPete is right. It's easy to crack water mains. They break ever few weeks (at least in NY). All due to "time and pressure". So it is plausible that he could break the pipe.

Wasn't the pipe half empty? How could the pipe have been under pressure to spew up all that crap?

I guess it's just a movie.

I always thought that this was a ceramic or clay pipe, not iron or steel. But, if you start looking at the details, a lot of things aren't really that logical ... like a prison with walls 16-20 feet thick?? Maybe, but that seems like an awful lot of stone and mortar to use when you could just inspect the cells once a month and probably find any tunnels ... oh well it's a movie after all, not a documentary ...

Cinematic license. How could the pipe be under pressure if it was open at the end? Can't really build any pressure if you have a 3ft opening even if it's 500 yards downstream.

If you take the time to analyse them, just about any movie plot will have gaping holes.

I had no idea this was a stephen king story. lol, i don't seem to remember him being mentioned in the credits.

I remember reading this book (novella, actually) in Jr. High and being blown away by it b/c I had been expecting a "monster story" from S.K.

The book it's from is called "Different Seasons," and it's one of my favorite King works. It consists of 4 different novellas, 3 of which inspired movies. Obviously Shawshank, and then Stand by Me, and Apt Pupil. While I didn't like Apt Pupil in story, nor movie form, the other two are great stories, and great movies

When they marketed it they didn't use his name either. they used "from the author that brought you...(I wanna say) Stand by Me,"

I always thought that was cool. Because Kings name has a stigma to it.

They didn't want to give the audience the impression it was a horror movie.

I didn't care about the details of the movie, it was an incredible character drama.

I always thought that like when it rains here in California, maybe the sewage was rushing thru the pipe at the time Andy broke thru. I didn't think anything about it. 500 yards is pretty damn_far to crawl tho, my inconsistencies were with trying to think: 1) what time was lights out? And 2) how long would it take me to crawl thru 500 yards of piping? Me, I woulda sent Bishop. Yeah, Bishop should go. He'd align the dish and send for the evac drop ship faster.

What I don't get is how that shit pipe just terminated in a stream

I see that all of the time here in New Joisy.

Why do you think the Hudson River was so polluted for some many years? In addition to the industrial waste, raw sewage used to be dumped directly into the river. I'm sure the same could have been said for any city's river not too long ago. In fact when it rains heavily, most treatment plants can't handle the overflow so they are allowed to dump some amount of raw sewage into the environment. Lovely, isn't it?

I see....


I'll take the gangs, illegal aliens, and quakes here in California.

Don't be such a pessimist. It was half full!

It bubbled over at that instant because Red had ate chili the night before and had just flushed.

Did you ever wonder where the water in the LA "River" really comes from? And what about the runoff canals in the San Diego/Tijuana area? So you have gangs, illegal aliens, earthquakes, wildfires and water issues too!

Hey, Jersey is looking mighty pleasing now.

Sorry but the LA River is from the storm drains.