Vashirdfel
Simply A Masterpiece
VeteranLight
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
huggibear
I had seen this movie years ago and didn't remember it until I just saw it again. I wanted to watch it to see the earlier cuteness of Kate Beckinsale. Now I can rate this movie since I'm into this sort of thing now. This is the kind of movie you just have to watch and form your own opinion of it because the story line is cut & dry and if I said anything about it, it would include spoilers and I can't do that here. But in a nutshell, 2 graduates decide to take a trip out of the country before they head into college. Something happens that prevents their return. The end takes a very unique approach to partially solving the problem they encounter. It was tremendously touching how it ends. Would you do the same thing for your friend, if you were caught up in that kind of situation? Now I've intrigued you to watch it. Go ahead, I believe you will like it.
SnoopyStyle
Ex pat American Henry 'Yankee Hank' Greene (Bill Pullman) receives a tape from Alice pleading her case. Life long friends Darlene Davis (Kate Beckinsale) and irresponsible Alice Marano (Claire Danes) traveled to Thailand after high school graduation before leaving for college. They are befriended by charming hustler Australian Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine) who rescued them at a high class hotel. Darlene started going with Nick and convinced Alice to travel to Hong Kong. Two tins of heroin are slipped into Alice's bag and the girls are interrogated by the police. Darlene is tricked into signing a false conviction in Thai. Darlene's father (Tom Amandes) believes that Alice is guilty. They are both sentenced to 33 years. Embassy staff Roy Knox (Lou Diamond Phillips) is too jaded to find Nick Park.The movie doesn't really work until the girls get arrested. That's when things start to get interesting. Before that, the girls are simple, naive and entitled. The movie is better to condense that section much more. That part is predictably bland. The girls' relationship gets better and more complicated in prison. Overall, there are other better third world prison movies around.
evening1
Anyone who has seen the National Geographic Channel series "Locked Up Abroad" will understand how believable this story is. However, it would have been better had it been based on a real-life arrest.The only part that fails to impress and satisfy is the facile, somewhat saccharine ending. (Another element that rang untrue for me was the girls' age. How many parents would send a couple of graduating high-school seniors to Hawaii on their own?)The performances here are uniformly excellent and the settings appear highly realistic.I loved the musical score, and the friendship between Claire Danes and Kate Bettinsale was entirely credible. The always-excellent Bill Pullman shines as a lawyer who toils on low-glamor cases in Thailand but hasn't abandoned his ideals. It is perhaps a strength of this film that the nature and responsibility for the crime remained somewhat ambiguous.This should be viewed by every young person traveling to an exotic locale. When it comes to one's bags, one can never be too careful!
secondtake
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.
