Film Review: PAPILLON

Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller 
Rating: 3/5
133 minutes 
Director: Michael Noer 

It would be a toss-up as to whether classics need to be remade, especially if that classic featured legends such as Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
45 years after their ‘Papillon’ (1973), based on the (exaggerated?) 1969 personal memoirs of Henri Charriere, comes another big-screen presentation.
It’s Paris, 1931. Charlie Hunnam plays Charriere, a debonair safecracker, who’s falsely accused of a murder and packed off to Devil’s Island in French Guiana, off the coast of South America.  His dreams of settling down with a cabaret dancer (the beautiful Eve Hewson) die as soon as he lands in his cell, imprisoned for life, and exacerbated by the sinister and sadistic Warden Barrow (Yorick van Wageringen).
Chilling scenes of squalor and torture, both mental and physical, are at the core of this two-hour-plus film, rather competently helmed by Danish director Michael Noer. Charriere forms an unlikely liaison with the brainy Louis Dega (Rami Malek), who’s offered protection by the former in exchange for money needed to make good their escape.
Shot in picturesque locations of Malta, Serbia and Montenegro, the mountains and oceans are well captured by cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski. While Hunnam is no McQueen and Malek an inadequate substitute for Hoffman, Noer manages to extract decent performances from both.
However, what is heartening to see was the original screenplay writers of the 1973 classic — the legendary Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. — credited alongwith Charriere and present screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski.
At the heart of the film is man’s tenacity and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, despite a couple of failed attempts.