Totally. It's how it slowly builds up, the opening scenes on his pig farm where you can almost feel and hear the wind blowing around the cabin, him falling over in the mud trying to separate a sick pig from the rest, struggling to ride his horse to the change at the end and the shoot out with Little Bill's group. Without the slow start the second part wouldn't have been as powerful. But the slowness of the first half is so beautiful filmed, the rapport between Morgan Freeman and Eastwood shows the deep friendship they had which makes his revenge over Ned's death so understandable. It's genuinely one of my favourite movies, one of the few I've ever seen where you can barely find a flaw in it. And the casting is perfect. Brilliant movie.
Yeah, he almost makes himself look a bad actor to make the second half brilliant. But looking back at it, it's all brilliant how he plays the part. Or 2 parts tbh.
"Ever notices how you come across somebody once in a while that you shouldn't have ****ed with? That's me."
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
