Brokedown Palace *** (1999, Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Pullman, Lou Diamond Phillips, Daniel Lapaine) – Classic Movie Review 1157

In director Jonathan Kaplan’s excellently acted, moving and harrowing 1999 movie, lifelong American graduate friends Alice Marano (Claire Danes) and Darlene Davis (Kate Beckinsale) are in deep and desperate trouble when they’re arrested for smuggling in Thailand after a charming conman they meet plants heroin on them.

Danes and Beckinsale give notable, sterling performances and Bill Pullman is his usual stalwart self as Henry Greene, an ex-patriate American attorney living in Thailand who tries to get them home. Daniel Lapaine plays the captivating Australian man calling himself Nick Parks, who turns out to be the drug smuggler who gets the girls into to all the trouble.

Brokedown Palace is very well scripted by David Arata and convincingly handled by Kaplan, who keeps it as tense as it is credible. Alas, despite all the good, hard work, the film flopped, failing to make back even half of its $25 million budget (the US gross was $10,114,300).

A bad advert for Thailand, and the Thai legal system, it was mostly filmed in the Philippines, though some long-distance, set-up shots were taken in Bangkok. The movie’s title comes from a Grateful Dead song written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter from their 1970 album American Beauty.

After filming in Manila, Danes said it was a ‘ghastly and weird city’ that ‘smelled of cockroaches, with rats all over and no sewerage system and the people do not have anything — no arms, no legs, no eyes’. Her films were banned in the Philippines and the then President Joseph Estrada condemned her and declared her persona non grata.

Daniel Lapaine was born in 1971 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is an actor and director, also known for Muriel’s Wedding (1994), The Abduction Club (2002) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

Also in the cast are Lou Diamond Phillips, Jacqueline Kim, Tom Amandes, Aimee Graham, John Doe, Beulah Quo, Amanda De Cadenet and Paul Walker (uncredited) as Jason.

http://derekwinnert.com/muriels-wedding-classic-film-review-152/

http://derekwinnert.com/zero-dark-thirty-2012-jessica-chastain-joel-edgerton-movie-review/

http://derekwinnert.com/pearl-harbor-2001-ben-affleck-josh-hartnett-kate-beckinsale-classic-film-review-1142/

http://derekwinnert.com/the-aviator-classic-film-review-592/

http://derekwinnert.com/shooting-fish-1997-stuart-townsend-dan-futterman-kate-beckinsale-classic-movie-review-1490/

http://derekwinnert.com/william-shakespeares-romeo-juliet-classic-film-review-438/

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/