Brokedown Palace (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com Member: Online Film Critics Society
** out of four
Starring Claire Danes, Bill Pullman. Rated PG-13
I've seen Brokedown Palace twice before. The first time it was called Red Corner and then Return to Paradise (you are welcome to click on the link and refresh your memory concerning the latter as I will come back to it numerous times in this review). This, then, is nothing but typical Hollywood recycling of earlier, superior movies. Such rehashing almost never makes anything decent and the resulting film suffers all the more if its predecessors are still fresh in our minds.
The first scene has "Yankee" Hank, a lawyer, receive an audio tape in the mail. He inserts the tape into a player and listens to the story of Alice (Claire Danes) and Darlene (Kate Beckinsale) two recent high school graduates who come to Thailand on vacation and meet a charming Australian fellow who convinces them to go to Hong Kong with him. At the airport they are stopped by police who find an inordinate amount of cocaine in one of their backpacks. Alice was carrying the backpack and Darlene was the one who packed it but both claim to have no idea where the narcotics came from.
They are arrested and taken to a typically brutal and unlivable Eastern- world penetentiary where one of the girls is deceived into signing a confession. The girls are then urged to consult with a lawyer, as there is no sign of the mysterious Aussie, whom the girls suspect of planting the drugs in their luggage. The lawyers they talk to both advise that they plead guilty to the crime in hopes that the judge is lenient and sentences them to a mere 40 years in jail as opposed to life. If they plead innocent and are unable to provide indemnifying evidence, the lawyer says, then the judge will not think twice before sending them to jail for the rest of their lives.
In the movie's most compelling act, Darlene's father arrives at the scene and attempts to enlist the help of the American embassy. Not surprisingly, he gets no help from the embassy, leaving Alice and Darlene with but one hope: the services of "Yankee" Hank Green, who is more than sympathetic to the girls' cause but is equally concerned about money and his other pressing cases.
Brokedown Palace is most reminiscent of last year's near-brilliant Return to Paradise which placed a riveting moral dilemma in what was essentially the same plot. This is the Hollywood version of Return to Paradise; a sanitized reworking of what was a breathtakingly real work. That movie was resolved mercilessly and believably while the resolution here comes off as a contrivance. Paradise was a brilliantly pulled off morality play which asked a thoughtful, (hopefully) rhetorical question: would you sacrifice X years of your life to save a friend by taking responsibility for your own mistakes or would you let him hang? Palace is the "Monkey-see monkey-do" movie; a film in which the director leaves the audience with nothing to do but just watch the protagonists' dilemma unfold and sympathize with them.
But my biggest problem with Brokedown Palace isn't its blatant hollowness but rather its ending. It's not even the fact that it's contrived, as I mentioned earlier. What angered me is how the filmmakers found a way to have their cake and eat it too, and in the process ended their film on a glaringly false note. As much as I want to describe exactly what I mean here, I cannot for fear of spoiling the film for those who, despite my fervent admonitions, decide to see it; I will, however say this: Brokedown Palace has one of its characters do something that it claims is the right thing to do. At first glance the here unspecified action may ring true, but with a little thought you realize that it is probably the worst possible thing said character could have done.
There are some things worthwhile in this most flawed of films. Although Kate Beckinsale is phony in a lead role, Claire Danes is wonderful. Her extraordinary talent manages to surprise me even the times when I fully expect a compelling performance. Bill Pullman, never known for emoting, is stoic but effective as "Yankee" Hank, although his character is taken directly out of the proverbial "Screenwriter's Guide to Movie Cliches."
Somewhere near you there is a video store. Instead of going to the theater to see Brokedown Palace rent Return to Paradise instead. Please. It is the American moviegoer who needs to show Hollywood that sub-par pseudo-remakes of good movies will not fly. I'm starting a crusade. ©1999 Eugene Novikov‰
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