Papi's protracted, chaotically paced setbacks begin to feel less like a test of his resilience than the viewer's.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 23, 2018

But whether taken as a study in human resilience, as an oblique love story, or as an indictment of the French penal system, this drama is claustrophobic and oppressive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 21, 2018

The deadening narrative structure (escape, capture, escape, capture etc) eventually overwhelms everything else on screen.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 21, 2018

Both actors rise intelligently to the occasion.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 20, 2018

Fails to do anything the original version didn't.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 20, 2018

There is no discernible benefit or loss at the end of this long drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 20, 2018

Both men put in good work but their bromance never convincingly ignites in this solid but anonymous effort by Danish director Michael Noer.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 19, 2018

This adaptation of Papillon is fine. The performances are fine, the direction is fine. But was a remake really necessary if there isn't anything spectacular about it?

| Aug 25, 2018

I could never quite figure out why this story was being told again, and I drifted away from its action way too often.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 24, 2018

As director Michael Noer struggles to tease a theme out of a string of exploits, Papillon remains as entertaining as ever.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 24, 2018

The end result feels routinely anonymous.

| Aug 23, 2018

It is an impressively staged and appropriately rain-soaked, mud-splattered, bone-crunching tale, more violent and filled with rougher language than its predecessor, if not quite as powerful or moving.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2018

Director Michael Noer falls short in a number of ways, leaving a sense of missed opportunity.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 23, 2018

Mr. Hunnam plays Papillon with a certain fierceness and swagger, but his psyche is largely impenetrable.

| Aug 23, 2018

What Charriere endured, and finally left behind, has already proven irresistible to a global audience. This retelling - prettily assembled, a little dull - gives that audience little that's truly new.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 23, 2018

Though Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek give everything they've got to this true-life prison escape, they're denied the chance to make their characters as indelible as Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman did in the 1973 original.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2018

If you're a fan of the two leads, it is worth your time, but if you're a fan of the original film, it becomes more of a curio, an interesting comparison of filmmaking in the Seventies to what contemporary cinema gives us today.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2018

The film is mostly sedate, without tension and with too much smolder.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 23, 2018

Working from a script by Aaron Guzikowski, the director Michael Noer generally puts the camera where it should go and adds a sterile Parisian interlude but nothing much else of note.

| Aug 23, 2018

Charrière's 1969 book became a popular, controversial memoir in France. So why has it inspired not just one but two so-so prison escape films?

| Aug 22, 2018