The Next Three Days and Shawshank Redemption

            The films Shawshank Redemption and The Next Three Days have very few commonalities and many differences.

            Though very rare, the commonalities in both films were relatively easy to spot.  For example, both films involve an innocent person who had been put in jail for supposedly killing someone they knew.  In Shawshank Redemption, Andy is incarcerated for the supposed murder of his wife and the man she was having a love affair with; however, in The Next Three Days, all evidence points to Lara killing her boss.  First she had a fight with the boss, then her fingerprints were on the murder weapon, and then she was seen driving away from the scene of the crime.  Another example of a commonality between the films is that they both involve escaping from jail.  In Shawshank Redemption, Andy escapes by himself, while in The Next Three Days, John comes up with the master plan to break his wife out of jail.  Another example is that both films look at the foul play that goes on when getting money.  Specifically, in Shawshank Redemption, Andy launders money for the warden even though before prison, he was an honest banker.  In The Next Three Days, John first gets mugged by some drug dealers, and then he mugs them back to obtain the “truck load” of money needed to stay afloat after breaking Lara out of prison.

            There were also many differences between the two films.  For example, the characters in both films dealt with a different reason for why the person broke out of jail.  In Shawshank Redemption, Andy wants to live life, and he wants to go to Mexico to start a very minor boat tour place.  In The Next Three Days, on the other hand, John wants his life to go back to how it was before Lara was arrested.  He wants his family to be whole and happy again.  Another difference between the films is that both films take place in different time periods and span over a different amount of years.  Shawshank Redemption takes place from the end of the 1940’s to the end of the 1960’s.  The Next Three Days takes place in modern day and spans over only about three years.  A main difference between the films is the character’s perspective.  In Shawshank Redemption, the perspective is from a prisoner’s point of view in jail.  In The Next Three Days, the point of view is from outside the jail, and the audience never knows what life is like for Lara inside the jail.

            Shawshank Redemption and The Next Three Days have a small amount of commonalities and quite a few differences.  They are both films about prison break.  However, both films are from a different point of view.