Taglines: A perfect summer / A perfect stranger / A perfect set up.
Brokedown Palace movie storyline. Lifelong best friends Alice Marano and Darlene Davis take a trip after graduating from high school, giving their parents the impression that they’re going to Hawaii. However, Alice talks Darlene into going to Thailand instead, after comparing the prices of both destinations.
Darlene agrees, albeit with some reluctance. Once in Thailand, they meet a captivating Australian man who calls himself Nick Parks. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and convinces Alice to take Nick up on his offer to treat the two of them to what amounts to a day trip to Hong Kong. At the airport, the girls are seized by the police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin.
The two girls are interrogated by the Thai police and Darlene signs a confession written in Thai, which she foolishly thinks is her verbatim statement. At their trial, they beg for mercy and are given a lenient 33-year sentence instead of the usual life sentence in prison. In prison, the girls are advised to seek out Henry Greene, aka “Yankee Hank”, an expatriate American attorney living in Thailand.
As the girls try to deal with the violence and squalor of prison, Hank begins work on their case. He tracks down another girl who had been used as an unwitting drug mule by Nick Parks, but is warned that the smuggler has friends in high places. Hank arranges a deal with a corrupt prosecutor whereby the girls will receive a clemency if they confess to having lied about Parks’ involvement.
Brokedown Palace is a 1999 American drama film directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and starring Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Pullman and Lim Kay Tong. It deals with two American friends imprisoned in Thailand for drug smuggling. Because it presents a critical view of the Thai legal system, most scenes were filmed in the Philippines; however, some panoramas and views were filmed in Bangkok. Its title is taken from a Grateful Dead song written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter from their 1970 album American Beauty.
Film Review for Brokedown Palace
In ”Brokedown Palace,” Claire Danes embodies an all-too-believable, contemporary version of ”The Ugly American.” Her character, Alice Marano, is a spoiled, selfish recent high school graduate who takes a defiant pride in being impulsive, dishonest and uncommitted to anything beyond her own instant gratification. When she and her best friend, Darlene Davis (Kate Beckinsale), decide to go on a short overseas vacation after graduation, Alice persuades Darlene to lie to her family and say they are visiting Hawaii when they are really going to Bangkok, a destination Darlene’s family would have vetoed.
Once in Thailand, Alice throws herself around with a reckless curiosity along with an air of outrageous entitlement that, we learn, has always characterized her behavior. And with just a few subtle adjustments of her mannerisms, Ms. Danes skillfully metamorphoses from the beautiful, refined, introspective teen-ager of ”My So-Called Life” and other good-girl roles into a rude, insufferable pain in the neck.
In Bangkok, Alice, disgusted with the roach-infested guest house in which they’ve been staying, convinces Darlene that they can pass themselves off as guests in a luxury hotel long enough to steal a swim in the pool. When a waiter asks them to sign the bill for their drinks, Alice invents a room number, but the ruse is quickly discovered. Just as they are about to be thrown out of the hotel, a charming young Australian who calls himself Nick Parks (Daniel LaPaine) and claims to be in the computer software business comes to their rescue and signs their bill. As he squires the pair around Bangkok, both girls quickly fall under his spell and begin competing for his attention.
When Darlene announces that Nick has invited them to Hong Kong for the weekend, Alice, jealous of her friend but reluctant to admit it, balks, then changes her mind. Just as they are about to board the plane, the police arrest the two for possessing six kilos of heroin that have been planted on them. As their nightmare in a filthy Thai women’s prison, nicknamed the Brokedown Palace, begins, Alice for the first time finds herself in a position that she can’t manipulate, no matter how many tantrums she throws.
Although the basic premise of the movie is similar to that of the better, more complex ”Return to Paradise,” which was set in Malaysia, ”Brokedown Palace,” which tells the story of Alice’s redemption from brattiness to something verging on martyrdom, rides on the steady emotional current of Ms. Danes’s fine performance. Filmed in the Philippines (the movie’s portrayal of a corrupt Thai justice system made Thailand off limits as a location), the movie conveys a pungent sense of cultural dislocation, especially after the friends have landed in a dank prison where they are forced to sleep crowded beside the other prisoners on bamboo mats.
Most of the film focuses on Alice’s and Darlene’s efforts to get a new trial, and ultimately a royal pardon, after they have been convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to 30-year prison terms. As a last resort they turn for help to Hank Greene (Bill Pullman), a disreputable money-grubbing American expatriate lawyer familiar with the Thai justice system. The movie portrays that system as rotten from the top (Lou Diamond Phillips plays Roy Knox, a sinister high-ranking Thai diplomat) down.
”Brokedown Palace,” directed by Jonathan Kaplan from a screenplay by David Arata, is good enough so that you wish it were better. Because the character of Darlene never comes into focus, the central theme of a close friendship put to the ultimate test isn’t as compelling as it ought to be.
Although the movie offers plenty of indications of the harshness of prison life, it shies from showing the worst horrors. The crucial early scenes of the pair being wooed and manipulated by the rakish Australian who, for reasons that aren’t clarified until the end, set them up for the bust are unnecessarily vague and muddled. But at the very least, ”Brokedown Palace” offers a disturbing reminder that being a willfully ignorant ugly American abroad with an attitude could be a recipe for disaster.
Brokedown Palace (1999)
Directed by: Jonathan Kaplan
Starring: Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Lou Diamond Phillips, Bill Pullman, Jacqueline Kim, Aimee Graham, Tom Amandes, Daniel Lapaine, Amanda De Cadenet, Bahni Turpin
Screenplay by: David Arata, Adam Fields
Production Design by: James William Newport
Cinematography by: Newton Thomas Sigel
Film Editing by: Curtiss Clayton, Don Zimmerman
Costume Design by: April Ferry
Set Decoration by: Peter Walpole, William Kemper Wright
Art Direction by: Roy Lachica, Neil Lamont
Music by: David Newman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language, drug related material and some violent content.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: August 13, 1999
Views: 170
