Papillon

The term "remake" gets thrown around a lot these days, more often than not with a roll of the eye. Once in a while, however, Hollywood gets it, for the most part, right. Director Michael Noer's updating of "Papillon," the 1973 Steve McQueen-Dustin Hoffman starrer - itself an adaptation of Henri Charri�re's bestselling memoir - more or less retains the earlier film's feverish intensity, while maintaining the heart that is the center of this unbelievable story.

Henri "Papillon" Charri�re, a lowly Parisian safecracker, finds himself in a waking nightmare, framed for a murder he didn't commit. Sentenced to a penal colony an ocean away in French Guiana, Papillon and the rest of the condemned are essentially forgotten about by their homeland. Now, normally, I would say that prison colonies such as the one depicted in this film (and in the 1973 version) are of the wretched sort you only find in movies, except that this prison is based on a real-life hellhole which operated for years in the early part of last century. Papillon stares death in the face again and again, including for several years in solitary confinement, while incredibly keeping a tenuous grip on his sanity. From the start, Papillon has his eyes on escape, but escape costs money. Enter fellow prisoner Louis Dega, a rich counterfeiter also sentenced to this voyage of the damned. Papillon offers protection to Dega, a nebbish who otherwise would never survive his first year in custody, in exchange for bankrolling his escape and the two become allies. Throughout the years, and over the course of several escape attempts, the desperate captives come to form an unlikely, yet altruistic, bond.

Filling the formidable shoes of Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman must have been a daunting proposition for Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek; the 1973 "Papillon" was arguably McQueen's best performance. I would suggest, however (and this is not a ding on the legendary McQueen), that Mr. Hunnam actually surpasses McQueen's characterization of Papillon. A versatile actor, Hunnam exerts a prouder alpha-male hypermasculinity and inherent gravitas that makes his Papillon a stronger incarnation than his predecessor's. With all due respect to Mr. Malek (I can't wait to see him as Freddie Mercury in the upcoming Queen biopic, "Bohemian Rhapsody"), his Dega comes across as more bewildered than anything else regarding his current predicament. As a result, the relationship between Papillon and Dega, which should be equally distributed between brawn and brains, feels unbalanced at times, with the powerful Hunnam assuming an almost mentor-like role to the perplexed Malek. By contrast, in the 1973 version, Hoffman more clearly registered Dega's profound terror at his situation: His Dega didn't need a teacher; he absolutely needed McQueen's Papillon in order to stay alive. Despite this unevenness, what the two actors do manage to sensitively convey is the bond Papillon and Dega come to create, a brotherly affection for one another born out of extreme circumstances.

Working from a perfectly adequate screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski, director Noer and his team occupy the movie with plenty of mud, filth and blood to drive home the shittiness of the prison camp. Noer's "Papillon" is a glossier production than Franklin J. Schaffner's 1973 version, which was a more visceral experience, due, perhaps, to the era in which it was made. However, Noer never compromises the horror and the brutality of Papillon's day to day, and he ups the graphic quotient quite a bit.

While the marketing materials for "Papillon" indicate what would seem to be an adventure epic, this is no Indiana Jones-type movie. As far as remakes go, however, "Papillon" is a faithful retelling of a harrowing story, brought to life for a new generation of people to discover what is an engrossing tale of human endurance.