PAPILLON
Directed by FRANKLIN J. SCHAFFNER
Screenplay by DALTON TRUMBO and LORENZO SEMPLE JR.
It is nice to see French Guiana again. The French may have shut down the infamous penal system they used to maintain there, but it still flourishes as a country of the mind, a Disneyland for masochists, in the imagination of moviemakers. For them the guards will always and universally be sadistic brutes, the prisoners either nice guys or people doing time for bad raps.
Somelike Henry Charriere (Steve McQueen), whose nickname, Papillon (Butterfly), is symbolized in a tattoo on his chestare endlessly obsessed with plans for escape. Others,...
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