'Papillon' review: Escaping Devil's Island takes a long time

The new film version of " Papillon," based on Henri Charriere’s 1969 bestseller about his time on the penal colony of Devil's Island, is somewhat better than the previous screen adaptation starring Steve McQueen (mouth closed) and Dustin Hoffman (mouth agape). For some that’ll be heresy. For others, it’s a diffident Gallic shrug of a recommendation.

Directed by Danish documentary and feature filmmaker Michael Noer, the new film covers more ground chronologically than the previous one, which is a welcome change. In Aaron Guzikowski’s script we meet the dashing safecracker nicknamed Papillon (Charlie Hunnam) breezing through his merry life in the Montmartre section of Paris 1931. 

Abruptly Papillon is arrested and convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, and he is flung into the cesspool of the French penal system shortly afterward. Life imprisonment in French Guiana sends Papillon into a series of rescue attempts. Along with another convict, counterfeiter Louis Dega (Rami Malek, trying as hard as possible not to "do" Dustin Hoffman), Papi eventually finds himself on the notorious Devil’s Island, from which no man has ever escaped.

The movie, shot in Serbia and on Malta, dutifully hits the highlights of the escape attempts. Hunnam is the movie’s focal point, a good-guy criminal, who never hurt a fly until the sadistic French penal system grabbed hold of him. Dega, a coward and a weakling, needs his friend’s protection. In exchange, he bankrolls the various bribes and payoffs needed to make a successful break from Devil’s Island, his money tucked safely away in his posterior.

In 1973, " Papillon" got the plodding Important Motion Picture treatment; this time, the results are leaner, less sardonic but rarely exciting, despite the more explicit violence and sexuality. Malek’s Dega keeps his voice to a flat register, never quite making the performance his own. Hunnam’s reliably charismatic in suffering and in joy, but with most of the political and wartime context shaved off the story, once again, we’re left with the basics.

What Charriere endured, and finally left behind, has already proven irresistible to a global audience. This retelling — prettily assembled, a little dull — gives that audience little that’s truly new.