Papillon (Matt)

Papillon

When I was a kid I had an Alvin and the Chipmunks tv show on VHS. I think this was one of their holiday specials, one of the valentine's day ones I think, but that's not important. What is important is that in the middle of this tape one of the commercials that ran was an ad for this movie, Papillon. I remember seeing that advertisment a lot, as I watched this tape over the years, and for whatever reason the ad really stuck with me. All that it consisted of was a still image of Steve McQueen, the actor that plays the character Papillon, staring over an ocean from a washed up old tree trunk. That's all it was. There was some music playing and a deep booming voice would begin talking about when the movie would play. It never mentioned the plot or anything else about the movie. Just the name of it and the time. The result of this is that my 10 year old self would try and imagine what the movie was about. I thought maybe it was about a shipwrecked sailor surviving on an island, or maybe he was a treasure hunter out looking for hordes of gold and jewels. Nope, I was wrong.

This movie was much more graphic than I anticipated. I have never seen anything featuring content of this type from the seventies. The movie was released in 1973. They specifically reference hiding things in their butts, they talk about masturbation, they show beheadings, heck at one point the main character takes cocaine! I was amazed that this type of content was shown back then. This could be largely due to my lack of seeing many movies from that period of time though.

Aside from that, the movie held my attention for it's full run time, which was around two hours and thirty minutes. That is pretty amazing when you take into consideration how little dialoge that there was in the film. The acting and the cinematography were top notch. I could feel the humid heat that these poor prisoners were experiencing. I was experiencing the dark, lonely, and hungry solitude that Papillon was going through while in solitary. It was very well done. Both Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman were amazing in the film.

I would definately recommend givng this movie a watch, however put the kids to bed first eh? It's a little rough for em.

I'll rate this movie 8 failed escape attempts out of 10.

~Matt Hurdle