It’s a shitty Tuesday in Boston, and if you’re at all like us, you’re looking out the window right about now and plotting a lengthy escape from whatever confines you find yourself in — be it office, retail shop, or Workbar — and Bleecker Street has just the trailer for your current mood. The distributor just dropped the first trailer for Papillon (that’s French for “butterfly” in case you took Spanish or German in high school), which tells the true story of Henri Charrière (Charlie Hunnam), an innocent man (with a butterfly tattoo on his chest) who is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and his attempts to escape from the horrible penal colony he’s sent to in French Guiana with the help of a rich counterfeiter (Rami Malek).
It’s action-packed and pretty fun, and our only gripe is that it’s going to take until August for it to hit theaters. This is totally a Father’s Day movie, Bleecker Street.
Peep it:
Charrière’s story was previously made into a film by Franklin J. Schaffner back in 1973, with Steve McQueen in Hunnam’s role and Dustin Hoffman in Malek’s, and it’s the kind of wonderfully under-seen period gem that feels like a surprise when you see it for the first time. Early word from TIFF last year suggests that this film may live up to the first one, and we’re cautiously excited to see how this turns out.
Here’s a synopsis straight from the good folks at Bleecker Street:
Based on the international best-selling autobiographic books “Papillon” and “Banco”, the film follows the epic story of Henri “Papillon” Charrière (Charlie Hunnam), a safecracker from the Parisian underworld who is framed for murder and condemned to life in the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island. Determined to regain his freedom, Papillon forms an unlikely alliance with a convicted counterfeiter Louis Dega (Rami Malek), who in exchange for protection, agrees to finance Papillon’s escape.
Papillon hits theaters on August 24.
Featured image via Bleecker Street.