Good concept, poorly executed.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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. I never understood the hype surrounding Papillon i mean this movie was way to slow and way to boring for me to fully enjoy it. The acting wasn't anything special either and the overall storyline was just meh plus the running time could have been way shorter for a movie like this i mean common you could have done this under the 2 hour mark since it didn't do or say anything special to begin with anyways. (0/10)

"Papillon" is the closest I've seen Steve McQueen attempt to actually act. He was never an actor, he simply stuck to a certain image and that was it. To be fair to him though, he did make some outstanding films. Several of his films were box office successes, including the above. Dustin Hoffman is the actor to watch, he conveys vulnerability as well as intelligence as a fellow inmate. From the first moment of "Papillon," you never forget the harshness and cruelty that the prison staff inflict upon the convicts. The living conditions for the latter are thoroughly deplorable and these are shown via scant lighting and arched camera angles. Steve McQueen is the convict who never confirms to the prison system, his fighting spirit remaining active throughout. This is McQueen's last film of quality and it is a masterpiece.

Papillon is a story of what men will do in a time of crisis, such as being in a rather hellish penal prison colony run by the French on one of their islands. Steve McQueen was probably the only actor that I can think of from the period who could portray this character, at least if this had to be done the Hollywood way (of course the man was French, Henri Carriere, so this goes without saying not counting French actors; perhaps Belmondo could've pulled it off, who knows). But there's so much that happens in his story, spanning many years (seemingly decades, though it's never completely clear), that I kept finding myself thinking 'Ok, oh wow, what happens next?"' It actually isn't entirely a prison movie, it should be noted; the last hour mostly takes place when Papillon, his friend Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman) and another prisoner find a way to get off of the island by boat. But I think the parts of the film I will remember for, well, forever, will be the scenes set in at the prison, and even those early scenes where the filmmaker, Franklin J Schaffner (via writers Trumbo and Semple), simply shows what the situation is: all these men put together, most if not all of them have done something likely prison-worthy, but for this place, this setting, an entire ocean away from their homeland is the thing. Indeed an early scene on the ship that takes the prisoners across the sea, and when Papillon first gets into trouble (one of those middle-of-the-night attack things) is just a small sample of what horrors await him.What Papillon and Dega have done does count, up to a point - these men are a safe-cracker who got a falsely accused murder rap and a counterfeiter respectively - and the actors make them vulnerable and just interesting to watch. So that by the time these men are having to watch all the time to not end up on a s***-list, it gets tense. And yet, it being Papillon as played by Steve frigging McQueen, the star of The Great Escape, we might hope that he has one goal: to get the hell out. But there's no special motorcycle to do a jump over in this case. When this character gets caught, he has to do more time - in solitary - which is around a 15-20 minute chunk in the middle of this film.I should be clear on this point: if you've seen certain scenes set in solitary confinement in other movies, this is one of the most brutal to watch if not just right up there (oddly enough perhaps the other McQueen's film Hunger tops it). We see Papillon stuck in a cell for what feels like a while - and it ends up being two years (!) - and the whole purpose, as he is told by the main prison warden, is to break him from mind to body, from head to toe. And one sees McQueen, giving it his all as an actor, becoming unhinged at a lot of points, eating bugs, having dream-hallucinations of his past in France and with his old friends (and dead fellow prisoners), and it's staggering work. Overall in this film I don't know if I've seen this man give so much for a character; for an actor who was often known for playing quiet, stoic types (and he could do it well), here it's more like hanging it all out. Which, when playing up against someone like Dustin Hoffman, it's a good idea not to be sleepwalking in a role.Papillon puts so many stakes for its characters, and yet what sets it apart from other prison-break-out movies are two things mainly: how bleak and unrelenting the pressure and suspense is, that at any minute everything can very feasibly fall apart (as the writing and direction make clear, this is a painfully realistic world, or a realistically painful one, same thing), and the location. It's beautiful in the jungles and beaches, but a lot of things can kill you (or people, like the lepers). The only real flaw for me is when the movie slows down just at point of the second to third act when Papillon winds up with the natives on the beach. There's no dialog, which is a nice experiment, but it drags the story down: up until then things have been epic in scope, but the pace is fast and it's all down to the story. If anything drags it, it's this unnecessary sequence.But by the ending, and it's really in the last 15/20 minutes that this tale gains some awesome pathos while still being a tough 'guy' movie, you see what this journey has done for these two men. The characters are built up so well enough, and portrayed with enough grit and honesty, that we care every step of the way (Hoffman really sells the nebbishness, but taking it from caricature to realism). Oh, and Jerry Goldsmith's score, which isn't constant but has enough for you to notice it, is a triumph of adventure/action/drama music for a movie of this kind.

Steve McQueen as Papillon is sent to the French Guyana prison camp on Devil's Island for murder. On the road he makes friends Louis Dega, a counterfeiter, and their friendship lasts quite a long time, this proves that this is the only thing that makes 2 men to hang on to as the long years of captivity.McQueen and Hoffman are excellent, director Franklin J. Schaffner creates an great atmosphere in the prison as well as in the jungle. The movie has a different climax. This probably has something to do with sense of justice the director seems to be suffering from. This is one of the contrasting features from the the known classics.