Review of Papillon (1973) by Steve K — 08 Aug 2009

This movie is something of a classic and it stars two of my favorite actors, so why did it take so long for me to see it? Well a big part of it was probably the title, I didn?t know what the hell a ?papillon? was and it didn?t intrigue me too much. Also the DVD of the movie has a rather dull brown picture on it which just wasn?t very eye catching. So what?s a ?pappillon?? Well it?s the main character?s nick name, he?s a French rogue (Steve McQueen) who?s found himself sent to a South American Penal colony which make Oz (the HBO series) look like Oz (the one with the wizard). There he meets a locked up, but very wealthy counterfeiter (Dustin Hoffman) who may be able to help him escape.

There?s some stuff to admire about the movie, but overall I was kind of lukewarm about it. Mainly I don?t think the McQueen/Hoffman pairing was everything it could have been. Both deliver good performances but I didn?t see much chemistry between the two. McQueen was acting like a movie star while Hoffman was acting like a character actor and these styles didn?t really mesh tremendously.

The other problem was possibly the film?s aggressive unpleasantness. The general purpose of this movie seems to be showing in meticulous detail just how crappy this penal colony was. And show you this it does, in every prison guard beating, ration taking away, labor intensive detail. It also chronicles this for a very long time. After all, why show Steve McQueen suffer for two hours when you can show him suffer for two and a half? This is sort of what The Great Escape would have been like if the people who made it really really really didn?t want the audience to enjoy their movie.

That said, the camera work here is impressive, and the two actors work is individually impressive. It has that traditional Hollywood style of filmmaking that can work in spades when employed right. In fact the whole thing feels like a bit of an anachronism at times, something that would have fit in better during the late sixties than the New Hollywood early seventies. As far as movies of this genre go I?d say this is all right. It just doesn?t hold up particularly well against other hellish prison movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Midnight Express, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest.