Review of Papillon (1973)
Seen in 2017.
A French safe-cracker wrongfully convicted of murder plots escape from the penal system in colonized Guiana.
Based on a dishonest autobiography. Some flawed acting by the leads, poor special effects, disappointing closing narration and remarkable glamorization of a topless native community, but good use of the length and genre formula, and the closing shots of the real prison in ruins are very nice, briefly leaving the genre. A fine accompaniment on a nocturnal troubleshooting session after I accidentally zeroed out the first 5 kB on a system drive.