A worthy remake?

How does 2018’s “Papillon” stand up to the original?

R 2:13

In one of the cleverest scenes of Danish director Michael Noer’s new version of “Papillon,” a group of convicts try to escape an inhumane prison during a special showing of the 1933 movie “King Kong,” the first of many big-screen iterations of the giant ape that has rampaged into cinemas as recently as last year with “Kong: Skull Island.”

The message seems to be, yes, “Papillon” is a remake of the Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated 1973 prison drama — and, no, Hollywood is never going to stop rehashing potentially profitable films, because the practice is almost as old as the movies themselves.

That said, remaking classic films can be a tricky business. Ideally, a remake offers something different and distinctive from the previous version. Sadly, Noer’s “Papillon” is a grittier but largely generic addition to the popular prison drama subgenre.

Noer’s remake doesn’t do much to distinguish itself, apart from shaving 15 minutes off the original’s two and a half hour runtime, adopting more naturalistic cinematography and making a feebly passing attempt at timely relatability with a coda that references the horrific abuses under the 20th-century French penal system.

For the new film’s script, screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski (“Prisoners”) draws both from the original screenplay as well as the original source material, the best-selling memoirs of onetime French convict Henri Charriere.

Taking up the lead role, Charlie Hunnam (“Pacific Rim,” TV’s “Sons of Anarchy”) portrays Charriere, who is nicknamed “Papillon,” which is French for butterfly, because he sports a prominent tattoo of the winged insect. When the movie opens in Paris circa 1931, he is a devil-may-care safecracker living high with his glam girlfriend Nenette (Eve Hewson).

But his cavalier choice to cheat his ruthless gang boss gets Papillon framed for murder, wrongfully convicted and shipped off to the notorious French Guiana penal colony in South America. En route, he crosses paths with fellow convict Louis Dega (Rami Malek, TV’s “Mr. Robot,” the upcoming biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody”), an infamously rich and skilled forger who is sure to have money and sure to be unable to defend himself given his slight stature.

So, the scrappy thief and the eccentric counterfeiter make a deal: Papillon will protect Dega from the other prisoners, if Dega funds Papillon’s plans to escape. Naturally, the merciless Warden Barrot’s (Yorick van Wageningen) warning that escape attempts will lead to long-term solitary confinement, a transfer to the legendary Devil’s Island or a trip to the guillotine, depending on the nature of the attempt, does little to deter Papillon.

Hunnam does create some compelling moments when his restless character has to cope with solitary confinement, but neither he nor Malek display the onscreen magnetism of their “Papillon” predecessors.

Conceivably, the filmmakers could have done more to put a distinctive stamp on “Papillon,” maybe making the story leaner to go along with the meaner, or perhaps more effectively tying the “based on true events” narrative to presentday concerns about the human and financial costs of incarceration. Instead, the remake simply reaffirms that Hollywood can and almost certainly will continue to go the unoriginal route of rehashing old movies − but that doesn’t mean audiences have to care about them.

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Rami Malek, Yorick van Wageningen. (Violence including bloody images, language, nudity, and some sexual material.)