RETURN TO PARADISE (1998)
Rating: 2.0 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Joseph Ruben
Written by: Bruce Robinson, Wesley Strick
Starring: Anne Heche, Joaquin Phoenix, Vince Vaughn, David Conrad
Synopsis: The setting of RETURN TO PARADISE is the real-life Muslim nation of Malaysia, where all prostitution is illegal, and drug dealing and sufficient possession are met with capital punishment. People bow in Islamic prayer at prescribed times of the day. Crime in general is harshly dealt with.
Enter Lewis McBride (Joaquin Phoenix), and his buddies Sheriff (Vince Vaughn) and Tony (David Conrad). They are three culturally disrespectful young guys, who treat women like objects and indulge themselves with copious amounts of marijuana. Sheriff and Tony escape to the United States to become 'respectable,' but unknown to them Lewis gets caught and predictably sentenced to death for drugs.
Lawyer Beth Eastern (Anne Heche) informs Sheriff and Tony that Lewis has received the death penalty, but mentions there's a possibility of Lewis avoiding death if the two partners return to Malaysia to stand trial. Can she pay or otherwise convince the cowardly and irresponsible men to return to Malaysia to rightfully serve time for their offenses?
Opinion: Back in the old days, if you broke a neighbor's window, you paid for it. In the post-Watergate era the mentality shifted to "Everybody does it. It's only a crime if you get caught." Now, as prosecutor Kenneth Starr might observe, we have whiny, apparently guilty offenders with one foot in prison and the other foot in the grave, insisting, "I didn't even do anything! Why am I being persecuted?"
I'm a proponent of the concept of "audience justice" in movies. When I see some B-movie RAMBO wannabe arrogantly announce, "I know this JUNGLE like the back of my hand," I know in my gut that Mr. Know-it-all is going to bite the big one sometime during the movie. RETURN TO PARADISE seems to have forgotten the notion of good old fashioned justice because the film tries to pedastalize its Ivy League heroes - - make them seem noble and glamorous when in fact, there's nothing particularly enlightening about pampered whiners who cry out for preferential prison treatment on the basis of class, when in fact they are guilty as sin. "Hey, man, we didn't do anything wrong because we were on vacation, so we deserve better treatment than the locals."
Speaking of bad old days, back in ancient cowboy and Indian movies it was considered okay to portray Native Americans as "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" if the cowboys were the main characters and sufficiently handsome. As a modern American I had thought the days of tap dancing kewpie doll servants and Frito Banditos were over, but apparently the emphasis has merely shifted to Asia. RETURN TO PARADISE is, unfortunately, a film that proliferates the unwelcome stereotype of Asian women as gold-digging island sluts and prostitutes while the film's Asian men are portrayed as ugly, bantering drug dealers or sadistic faceless prison guards who bark incredibly ferociously, just to say "enter" in Malay. In RETURN TO PARADISE, Muslims/Asians in this film constitute a faceless race -- a barbaric, dehumanized, anti-white "other." This is an unconscionable example of modern cinematic race baiting.
I don't REALLY mind movies about moral yutzes. Nor do I mind in general when a fictional movie portrays fictional characters on a fictional island having sensationalistic adventures. As long as they're not naming names and singling folks out for racist caricatures.
But in RETURN TO PARADISE some good, kind, decent, technologically advanced folks - - are referenced specifically by location ("Penang, Malaysia") and singled out for overwhelming negativity. I have visited Penang and found it not too much different than Honolulu in terms of commercial trade, high technology, education, malls, theaters, and general friendliness. RETURN TO PARADISE singles out these same highly educated businessmen and women and their high tech Islamic society - - for portrayal as ruthless overlords, pimps, degraded prostitutes and sluts in a shantytown hell. Basically they took some GI's Subic Bay fantasy and said, "Hey, let's call it Penang. Nobody'll notice. You know how them Asian islands are all alike (wink nod)." This attitude is an unpalatable throwback to shameful, feathers-and-shoe-polish, supremacist notions in Hollywood.
In other respects, the cinematography and dramatic tension in RETURN TO PARADISE are good, as is the acting. Anne Heche is skillful as the lawyer under duress, but her chemistry with romantic lead Vince Vaughn seems strained.
Reviewed by David Sunga August 17, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
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