A French American adventure directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman and Victor Jory.
2017:
A Maltese Maltenegran Serbian American adventure directed by Michael Noer.
a Frenchman is framed for a murder he did not commit and imprisoned in French Guiana. He tries to escape and is caught twice. His punishment is multiple years of solitary confinement. Between these events, he makes friends with another inmate who was forging financial documents in France.
Typical. This went exactly how I thought it would.
The 1973 film was pretty good. The plot and characters held my attention. The story seemed large and long, but I guess 2.5 hours fits lots in 1973. The camera-work was mostly wide shots and multiple people with backgrounds to solidify location. There was some shot variety, with close ups appropriately used. The audio was reasonably good and I could hear what people were saying. The writing made sense and seemed sincere. I would rate this adequate and say it's worth checking out.
The 2017 film was like a child's crayon drawing of a renaissance masterpiece in comparison. I wanted it to be over when it had barely even started. The characters and plot were clearly based on the 1973 film to the point of the Louis Dega character mimicking Dustin Hoffman's voice. Also, Aaron Guzikowski (2017 writer) did not like the writing of Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (1973 writers) because so much of the plot changed over 44 years. I won't go into specifics, but a major point was the main characters carrying away the body of an executed prisoner instead of capturing a crocodile. The boat, poor village and native village section was all mixed up too. The camera-work was what I expected. New Hollywood's penchant for short edits of close ups was present. There were a few good shots, but not enough to merit identifying them. As expected as well was the audio. I don't need to describe it anymore at this point. I rate this bad for the reasons listed above.
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