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I'm a little surprised by the negative criticism this film is attracting.

I'm old enough to be the father of the two main characters; they seemed like accurately drawn teenage girls to me. And I've probably hung out with both of their fathers before. I've been to the Far East. I've stayed in both better and worse places than the girls stayed. I had the pleasure of seeing the inside of a police station after I was robbed. I'm glad I had no more direct exposure to the local judicial system than that; that was more than enough. Everything in this movie seems awfully familiar to me.

I think "Brokedown Palace" represents something pretty close to stark realism. It certainly reminded me of Asia.

Of course it's true that the attitudes of the girls often don't do much to improve their situation. But they are meant to be an example of what not to do overseas. And the portrayal of some of the Thais did make me uncomfortable. But then many of my own personal travel anecdotes don't paint a complimentary picture either.

This is a cautionary tale. An unfortunate consequence of too many people having too much money to spend these days is that you will find unescorted, unprepared, "streetwise", naive young people popping up in places where they have no business being. And when that happens, you end up with situations mirroring this movie.

I suspect people choose to denigrate this one because they are too embarrassed to accept how true it is, and how vulnerable they would be if placed in similar circumstances.

Although I go to the movies regularly, I didn't see a trailer for this film, and the few reviews I read beforehand suggested it would appeal mainly to women under 35. Being neither, I could have been excused for missing this film, which would have been a shame, because I enjoyed it. The acting from Danes, Beckinsdale and Pullman was excellent and a pleasant change from watching films where special effects try to substitute for quality acting. Brokedown Palace is one of the few films I've seen this year where I haven't been able to correctly predict the outcome half way through.

For me this was more than a repeat of the "tourist taken advantage of by nasty local/foreign low life" film. While it is clearly a cautionary tale of the risks of travelling abroad, it is also very much about trusting your friends and the extent you are willing to make sacrifices for them.

It is also a reminder that in any country, justice is dispensed by people with power, and the extent that truth features in the dispensing of justice is largely at their discretion. The film correctly portrays that crying "I'm an American citizen, I have rights" rarely sees an immediate release from jail and humble apology from the local police, nor does enlisting the help of the US embassy result in a company of marines landing at night to storm the jail and rescue you.

Brokedown Palace is one of the few films I have seen this year which I intend to see again.

We all have friends. Some of us have more than others but there really are only one or two people that you feel really close with, people that you can say are like your brother or sister. Alice ( Danes )and Darlene ( Beckinsale ) are like that. You can see that from the beginning. They graduated together, they go to parties together and they decide to go to Bangkok together when they were supposed to be going to Hawaii. They also get busted for attempting to smuggle drugs into a third world country and that spells disaster. The rest of the film is about survival and not giving up hope. It also has a strong message about the power of friendship and what it can mean to someone.

Brokedown Palace is a very good film, it is not excellent and that is due to a few issues that I want to talk about. But first I want to say what is good about the film. And for starters the acting is top notch, and you can look no further than the two leads. Danes and Beckinsale are perfect in the roles that they have. Alice is always fiery and seems a little rough around the edges, but she seems more fun than Darlene. But sometimes that fun can get her into trouble. Darlene is always a little on the conservative side and although that can get irritating sometimes, it would have served the two girls better if her way was adhered to instead of Alice's. Bill Pullman is adequate as the American lawyer living in Thailand. The film is photographed very well also. The inside of the prison while not the same as Shawshank or Natural Born Killers or Return To Paradice, but it does show the necessary ( but underdone) hopelessness of the situation that they are in. Johnathin Kaplan's direction is quite good as well. We see the two girls struggling to make it through each day but you can see their spirit is being put out a little more each day. Brokedown Palace is excellent when it talks about friendship and it shows how they have to rely on each other to survive. The other thing that I had to comment on is the soundtrack for the film. It heightens and compliments the mood of the film to perfection. The song that you hear in the trailer is also played in the film and when it plays you feel the plight of the women in this prison. You can feel how alone they must feel and how desperate they are to get out and get back to the simple things in life. And it also makes you look at yourself and realize how lucky we are to live in the society that we do. We have it easy compared to some country's and believe it or not the music is a perfect catalyst for reflection on this subject. Some of the music is done by a group called Delirium ( I think ) but it is Sara McLaughlin( wrong spelling, but how do you spell her last name? ) that does the lyrics and her voice is beautiful and haunting and it adds so much to the film.

What I didn't enjoy about the film was some of the stupidity that the girls exhibit. I won't say what it is that they do but when you see it for yourself you'll know what I am talking about. Also I didn't really feel that the prison they were in was all that bad. It looked more like a minimum security prison and that may be because when there are similar circumstances in other films that invlove men doing time in a foreign country, the prison scenes are always brutal and sadistic. But I didn't get that here.

Overall this is a great film and it really does make you ask the question, " How far would you go for a friend? " That is a tough question and maybe one that none of us could honestly answer until put into the same situation. Let's just hope that it never comes down to that.

Brokedown Palace (1999)

Who wouldn't have some curiosity and tension about two pretty young women (played by pretty young actresses, anyway), trapped in a Thai prison system for drug smuggling? But boy is this a clunky construction for a movie. First of all, the women are stupid. They admit to being stupid, but they are selfish and frivolous and you really couldn't care less if they went to jail. On the other hand, you can picture being in a foreign country and losing track of things a little and getting victimized and so you do, after all, get involved and hope for justice.

There is (sometimes) a tense progression of increasingly discouraging events, and the prison system is a tough place. And the sets and filming are really great. If only the writing was remotely convincing and smart. It's not. Even the direction is painful, emphasizing not the facts or some sense of possible realism, but an armchair version of what this kind of scenario might mean to two relatively innocent girls is just a little embarrassing. The director (Jonathan Kaplan) is the same one who missed a huge opportunity with some amazing material filming In Cold Blood, and he is, understandably, most known for television, which takes a different kind of sensibility. And it's also very slow, taking a few turns or progressions and stretching a two hour movie out of it.

It's a tough ride if you take it at face value. And it's a shame, because there is a Midnight Express hidden in here somewhere. There are some really gorgeous moments, aside from the travelogue stuff, and I think Claire Danes, at least, is a good actress. Just an example of how many elements it takes to align and get a great movie.

High on the list of sadly neglected and wholly underappreciated films of the past several years stands 1998's "Return to Paradise," a tale of three American vacationers who inadvertantly run afoul of the laws of Malaysia, two of whom must decide whether or not to sacrifice themselves and return to the brutal third world country to serve their prison sentence so that the third who has been caught can avoid execution. What is most remarkable about this film is that it manages not only to set up a fascinating moral dilemma for both the characters and the audience but, most amazingly, to stay true and honest to it throughout the course of the entire film.

"Brokedown Palace," whose plot echoes "Return to Paradise," falls several notches below the earlier film mostly because it saves its moral dilemma until the very end of the story. The resolution is a powerful one when it comes, but the delay robs the film as a whole of some of its interest. In this film, Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsdale play recent high school graduates who opt to visit Thailand instead of Hawaii and run into a sleazy young con man who plants heroin on them - an act for which, when it is discovered by the authorities, the girls are falsely imprisoned. The bulk of the film concerns itself with the attempts by an American lawyer (Bill Pullman) to clear their names and secure their freedom.

Much of the film plays like a rehash of "Midnight Express," as the girls are badgered and threatened through their interrogations and forced to endure the rigors of a Third World prison - although, strangely enough, the horrors seem oddly downplayed at times. These are the weakest sections of the film for the visualization of the experience seems almost too glamorized at times, as if the commercial-minded filmmakers didn't dare risk alienating these actresses' many fans by offending their sensibilities. Still, the situation is a ripe one for intense audience identification since who cannot empathize with a couple of fun loving adolescents caught in a nightmarish web not of their own making? Actually, the sharpest aspect of the film is the underlying theme of the scary part seemingly insignificant actions and decisions can play in determining the course of one's entire life. Constantly, the girls are forced to wonder "what if we had gone to Hawaii...what if we had not met the drug smuggler...what if we had not snuck into the hotel to order drinks on a stranger's room bill, etc." The movie also achieves some depth in its final moments as Alice (Danes) grapples with a major moral decision and discovers the redemption for a life built on a pattern of seemingly insignificant deceit and lies. She realizes that a person's character is made up of ALL the actions she performs in a lifetime, regardless of how trivial or benign they may seem at the time. In addition, she learns the often horrifying price true friendship sometimes demands - and her final actions betoken a personal maturation that helps lift her character far above the rung of conventional movie heroines.

"Brokedown Palace" may occasionally seem tedious in its details, but the thematic depth and moral underpinnings that lie within it make it a film worth watching.