Papillon

Marie bought me a couple McQueen blu-rays last Christmas. I was very stoked to get the Great Escape and Papillon. Both tremendous films. I hit up Starbucks last night and popped in the three hour Papillon for another viewing. 

God damn, it's good. Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman star as two French prisoners sent to a penal colony in French Guyana in the 30's. It's based on an autobiography that has come under much criticism for its authenticity and dubious content. "Papillon", the author, allegedly embellished much of it, straight up stole other prisoners' stories and claimed them as his own, and threw in a dash of what actually happened to him. The result was a wildly successful novel/bio about a wrongly-convited man who escaped from the unescapable. An innocent man fucked by the shitty French penal system. But an innocent man who beat the shitty French penal system, escaped, and lived for a couple decades as a free man and a hero. Vive la France. 

Dustin Hoffman plays a famous counterfeiter and does an excellent job. McQeen is Papillon and is somewhat upstaged by Hoffman if you ask me. But McQueen is still super cool. Probably one of his best moments. This flick is like the 1973 version of Mesrine. If you liked that (which you better have fucking liked) then watch this. This is the clear ancestor and grand-daddy of Mesrine. It's killer, man. So damn good. 

The score does a good job heightening the action, the cinematography is particularly good, and the editing is well-paced and dramatic. It's a very artistic film with plenty of integrity. It really stands the test of time. Hollywood could never churn out a three hour flick like this nowadays. Schaffner does a great job exploiting every last minute of film stock. 

I loved this. Just bought the novel on Amazon for $2 and I'm gonna watch the extras shortly.

My favorite prison break movies are all French. Mesrine, Papillon, and Le Trou. Go figure.