Papillon

Day 240 - 8/28/09 - Movie #236

BEFORE: Almost done with prison films (and with August). New York's annual August heat wave finally broke, but it served its purpose - namely to enhance my viewing of films set in hot, stuffy prisons. Tonight's film is a classic (and another "buddy" film, that's 4 in a row) as Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman try to escape from a French prison colony in Guyana (which I thought was in Africa, but I guess is in South America - oh, well, there's my larnin' for the day...)

I remember reading the MAD magazine parody when I was a kid, but I've never seen the film...

THE PLOT: A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.

AFTER: My all-time favorite Steve McQueen movie (and perhaps my favorite prison movie as well) is "The Great Escape", in which he plays an American soldier trying to escape from a Nazi POW camp. Each time he fails, he is sent to the "cooler" for a few days, where he bounces a baseball against the wall, and plans another escape attempt. In "Papillon", he plays (essentially) the same type of character - but after each failed escape, Papillon spends YEARS in solitary, getting older and crazier with each infraction.

Hoffman plays Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who pays Papillon for protection, since many of the prisoners and guards lost their fortunes buying Dega's phony war bonds. Oopsie... After several escape attempts, encountering con men, bounty hunters, lepers and shady nuns (this movie was sort of like an early version of "O Brother Where Art Thou", but without the music...) they end up on the infamous Devil's Island - old and infirm, but Papillon is still trying to escape. I suppose in the end it's sort of a metaphor for life - after all, no one gets out alive...

One more prison movie, then I'm tunneling out...

RATING: 7 out of 10 coconuts