Based on Henri Charrière’s sensationalized autobiographical novel, Papillon details the man’s (Charlie Hunnam) imprisonment for a trumped-up murder charge. Opening scenes of Henri cracking safes and living large on the streets of 1931 Paris offer a glimpse into a colorful high life before the justice system abruptly railroads the thief, who finds his fashionable clothes replaced by sweat-stained, rough cloth as he awaits shipment to a French prison colony in Guiana. Director Michael Noer establishes the misery of this sentence before Henri even departs, forcing him to stand in a square with other convicts as an official calmly informs them that France has turned its back on them before making the men strip nude en masse and change into their new uniforms. Upon arrival in South America, the warden (Yorick van Wageningen) gives a clichéd speech in which he encourages the inmates to attempt escape, if for no other reason than to provide guards with some amusement in the form of target practice. The warden adds that death from a bullet would be the kindest mercy, as only dehydration, starvation and dangerous animals await them in the surrounding area.
Using Charrière’s embellished, self-inflating book as a source, the film aggressively posits Henri’s quick wit in adapting to the situation. In particular, we see him quickly spot a possible mark in the form of Louis Dega (Rami Malek), a frail, bookish man who looks out of place among the strong, hard men marching to the ship that will carry them to Guiana. Noting especially the warm farewell he receives from loved ones and partners, Henri assumes he can ply the man for money to fund an escape attempt by promising the man protection. Louis initially spurns his offer with confidence, only to awaken that night to the rustle of his cellmate being disemboweled with a shiv. Staring at the scene wide-eyed and mute from terror, Louis reconsiders Henri’s proposition the next morning.
The prospect of life in a jungle labor camp seems unbearable, but the film never captures the sense of utter hopelessness that such a sentence would entail. When the inmates arrive in Guiana, the frame maintains the dimmed, overcast look of the French scenes, conveying none of the oppressive heat and humidity of the surroundings that would torment the prisoners. The ambient cruelty of fellow inmates and guards is to be expected, but nearly all of the seen threats and attacks in the film are specifically against Henri and Louis despite a lack of clear motive for their singling out. This has the effect of making the men’s plight feel less horrific than embellished, an exaggeration by the real Charrière that was transcribed by the filmmaker. The threats mostly blur together, save for one scene of Henri fending off an assault in a shower briefly recalls the sauna fight in Eastern Promises, but the clunky, genital-obscuring framing and editing dispels the raw fight for survival that the sequence needs for visceral impact.
Eventually, Henri loses his cool during one of these attacks, beating a guard so badly that he has to jumpstart his escape plans by fleeing recklessly into the jungle, only to be caught, returned and placed in solitary confinement for two years. Here the film understandably grinds to a halt, but Noer’s attempts to visualize the psychological impact of Henri’s isolation take the most obvious forms of hallucinations of freedom and imagined confrontations with allies and enemies. The only true break comes from the intriguing subplot of a fellow inmate sneaking him a coconut with his daily water supply. The scene in which a starved, half-mad Henri first tastes this treat is the film’s most enrapturing moment, the camera looking down at Henri’s upturned face as comfort, relief and sanity flow back into him.
This brief reprieve is the only thing to shake up the monotonous misery of the film, which persists even in action sequences of future escape attempts. This material has been mined before in the 1973 Steve McQueen vehicle, and this remake adds nothing other than a contemporary sense of sluggish movement and superficial severity. No one embodies the latter like Hunnam, who continues to misconstrue flat severity for somber, brooding depth. His flat seriousness renders Henri a blank figure, not compelling for his personality or his escape plans. Papillon hinges on the friendship that forms between Henri and Louis, but neither the film nor the actors show how the characters’ bond strengthens, simply repeating the beats of their amicable but cautious relationship until a late scene in which Henri runs to save Louis from some encroaching soldiers rather than save himself, and Louis cannot help but whisper “you came back” with a mixture of awe and gratitude. By itself, the moment is tender, a reflection of an unlikely, long-forming trust. In context, though, it simply exists at the end of an arc that lacks any definition, a belated stab at meaning in a pointless regurgitation of a story better told elsewhere.
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