Prison Flicks

Rating: (3 out of 5)

Starring: Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jacqueline Kim, and Bill Pullman.

Directed by: Jonathan Kaplan

Claire and Kate on location.

Much maligned as Midnight Express-lite, Brokedown Palace really isn’t half bad. It features decent acting, and it avoids taking the easy way out with a feel-good ending. Indeed, although many critics panned Brokedown Palace for its “unrealistic” conclusion, I think they were simply responding to the fact that the ending is unexpected. It goes against type, and by confounding expectations, it gives the impression of coming out of left field, but actually the ending is perfectly consistent with the overall theme of the movie. The movie is easy to misinterpret. It is ostensibly structured as straight exploitation, so it is easy to overlook the central story elements. Okay, enough vague foreshadowing, I’ll first discuss the plot and then return to my broader interpretation of what is going on here.

Picturesque downtown Bangkok… not shown: raw sewage and underage prostitutes.

The movie open unimpressively with travelogue shots of Thailand playing behind the opening credits. I’m always a little suspicious of movies that rely on “exotic” locales to set the stage for the proceedings. It usually hints at a laziness in developing the story. My fears were immediately heightened when the I saw that the beginning of the movie was going to be told as a flashback, introduced by a seedy lawyer playing a tape he receives addressed to “Yankee Hank.” The voice on the tape is that of Alice (Claire Danes), who essentially serves as narrator. Alice and her best friend Darlene (Kate Beckinsale) find themselves in a Thai prison and are hoping that Hank will help them after he hears of their plight….

FLASHBACK BEGINS

….Said plight begins as a post-high school graduation trip. Alice is from the wrong side of the tracks — although not so wrong as to make her unsympathetic — and will soon be separated from her middle class friend who is going off to college. So Alice plans a blow-out vacations with money saved from a job as a maid in a motel. Hawaii is too “bourgeois,” so she persuades Darlene to accompany her to Southeast Asia, largely because she sees some guy drinking a Thai beer at a party – which seems an unlikely beverage choice for a high school kid, but whatever – and because, she claims, “Thailand means freedom.” I don’t actually know if Thailand means freedom, although it seems unlikely to me for various reasons, not the least of which is that the country’s name is obviously an Anglicized word meaning, um, land of the Thai people.

Claire and Kate in a single bed… unfortunately, here they’re scampering away from a giant roach which sort of breaks the mood.

Anyhoo, Thailand is a little exotic for Darlene’s dad, so she has to lie and pretend that she’s actually going to Hawaii. This deception has surprisingly little impact later. The girls survive the “24 hour” flight and arrive at their destination. The Royal Somethingorother hotel turns out to be a $6/night dive. The girls spot a huge roach, and like a couple of big wimps, end up shrieking atop the ratty bed. Some globetrotters, eh? Still, I have to admit, I did like the idea of Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale sharing a bed… their hot, sweaty bodies pressing against each other…. Unfortunately, the girls soon fall asleep exhausted instead of engaging in sweet lesbian lovin’. Oh well. I really think the filmmakers missed an opportunity here.

The next day the gals go sightseeing. They do all the typical, picturesque stuff: they visit open air markets and temples and ride in a bicycle taxi. They behave as typical irresponsible teens might. Darlene vamps around with a bare midrift, which I guess is less likely to offend local sensibilities in Thailand than it might in Saudi Arabia, but still. Later, both girls break into hysterics while visiting a temple. Ha ha ha, sacrilege. Soon, though, they notice that June/July in Thailand is pretty foul, weather-wise – temperatures in the 90s and humid. Sort of like Florida, except with lots of raw sewage around… oh wait, that is just like Florida. The girls are tempted to take a dip in the city’s river… but they are dissuade by the aforementioned raw sewage. So instead, they sneak into a swank resort hotel and lounge around by the pool.

Nothing more exotic than Mai Tais by the pool.

So far so good. They order fruity drinks and get a tan…. You can see why they desperately had to go to Thailand. They don’t have pools in Hawaii… or Florida… or the Bahamas if the drinking age is the problem. Part of the reason for the scene is to show our comely stars in bikinis, and well, I guess all I can say is that I approve of the sentiment. Anyway, this pleasant afternoon soon turns sour. Alice – she’s a bad girl you know – tries to scam their drinks by charging them to a random room. Unfortunately, the room number she picks is already represented around the pool by another gentleman. The waiter confronts the girls, and as they try to pretend that they’ve just forgotten which room they’re in, he calls hotel security. Just as a bunch of surly-looking guys in dark suits appear to apprehend our heroines, they are saved by the appearance of good-looking Aussie (though he sounds sorta English to me actually, but whatever) who claims to know them and signs for their umbrella drinks.

Heck, he even looks sketchy.

As they regard their savior gratefully, he gives them a little wink and tells them he hopes they’re “scared straight.” He then walks away, only to be pursued by our two little chippies, who offer to buy him a drink to thank him. He demurs at first – a bit unrealistically in my humble opinion; I mean, what guy really turns down two bikini-clad cuties looking to repay favors? Anyway, he soon changes his mind, and the three of them go out on the town. Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine – which, I think, means Daniel Rabbit in French) is suave and charming. He takes the girls to a local restaurant where Darlene “adorably” bites into a hot pepper and nearly boots as a result. Then he takes the girls out on a boat, which gives Alice an opportunity to vamp around standing at the bow in the wind. Soon, both the girls are obviously competing for his affection. Unrealistically again, he never suggests a threesome, which should really have set off warning bells.

Darlene falls for the bad boy first.

Nick takes the girls dancing. Alice tries to seduce him with some lewd moves, and Darlene seems almost resigned to losing another man to her trampy friend, but surprisingly when Alice returns from a trip to the bathroom – unrealistically unaccompanied by her friend – she finds Nick and Darlene locking lips. Alice storms off petulantly, and when Darlene catches up to her, Alice grudgingly blesses the Darlene’s forthcoming one-night-stand. The movie conveys a surprisingly neutral tone about the wisdom of casual sex with some stranger in Thailand of all places. Thailand may mean “freedom” to some, but it also means STD to others. These are also, remember, 17 or 18 year old girls. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that 17 or 18 year old girls are innocent and uninterested in sex, but I think the movie portrays them as a bit more “sophisticated” than they would be in real life – especially Darlene, who is, after all, the “good girl” in this piece.

Alice is less than enthused about the whole Hong Kong idea…

Alice returns to their hotel alone. Darlene drags herself in the next morning. Alice wants to go sightseeing, but Darlene needs to sleeps. She’s been up all night, don’t you know. This Nick is a quite a guy isn’t he? He’s a man of means staying in a swanky hotel, he’s dreamy, and he can bop all night. He also wants to take the girls to Hong Kong. He has some business there, and would like them to join him for the weekend. Darlene, having been bonked silly all night long, is of course eager to accept his offer. Alice, needless to say, is less excited about being a fifth wheel (third wheel?) in all of this. Darlene, though, guilts her into it, pointing out that she’s gone along plenty of times when Alice was trying to land some guy. Alice relents. She then goes out and wanders around another open air market… and who does she run into? Why Nick, of course. And Nick, despite having just spent the entire night boffing her girlfriend, tries to get into her pants too! See if he’d suggested the threesome in the first place, it would have saved a lot of time.

…which doesn’t stop her from getting close to Nick.

Alice, to her credit, seems to reject his advances. Referring to his choice of Darlene instead of her the night before, Alice taunts, “You have no idea what you ultimately sacrificed.” Oooh baby, hurt me! She seems a little too sure of her sexual prowess, I think. But Nick doesn’t call her on it, and the scene ends without any further sexual repartee between the two of them. Nick has to go to the airport, and the girls will join him in Hong Kong the next day.

That evening Alice returns to the hotel room to find Darlene still a little groggy and surprised at her friend’s long absence. Instead of fighting, though, Alice gives Darlene a bracelet. The girls hug and makeup. The next morning, Darlene is eager to get to the airport. Alice is getting ready too, but slowly. Finally Darlene snaps that she’s going to go downstairs to pay the bill and get a cab while Alice dresses. As Alice puts the finishing touches on her appearance, the bellhop appears to take their luggage. Alice goes downstairs. The bellhop follows. There is a brief delay as a couple of cabbies argue over who gets the next fare, but finally that is settled. The girls climb in the back seat. The bellhop loads the bags into the truck, and they’re off. Remember this sequence of events.

“Officer, it’s, like, just baking powder, I totally swear.”

Alice and Darlene arrive at the airport late; in fact, the plane is already boarding. They scramble toward the gate. They get stuck at a checkpoint, and are surprised to see a bunch of police cars driving around on the tarmac. And then suddenly a large number of police armed with assault rifles bear down on the passengers. The police make a beeline for the girls. The captain quickly rips a knapsack off Alice’s shoulder. He unzips it and pulls out two medium-sizes metal containers, and inside those he finds a couple of kilos of white powder. Uh oh. The girls are quickly ushered into a windowless police van and hustled away.

They arrive in a murky jail. The authorities immediately start questioning Alice. They give her the real hard sell; I half expected them to beat her with a rubber hose, but instead they merely try to browbeat her into confessing. Meanwhile, Darlene is languishing in a filthy cell. She asks to use the bathroom, but is shown a gross, roach-cover hole in the ground instead. She apparently decides to hold it. Alice hangs tough. She denies knowledge of the drugs, and when the cops try to get her to sign a copy of “her statement” written in Thai, she wisely refuses.

Alice understands first the gravity of the situation as Darlene tries to explain why she signed the “confession.”

The jailers pull a “good cop” routine on Darlene. A more senior guard takes her from her cell and allows her to use a normal bathroom. He tells her that he just wants to clear things up. She also denies knowledge of the drugs, but she isn’t clever enough to refuse to sign a statement she can’t read. Needless to say, when the girls are reunited, Alice is dismayed to hear that her friend has signed a statement – presumably a confession of some sort — written in Thai. Clare Danes is a fine, fine young actress, but when she reaches deep inside for extreme emotions like rage and despondency she misfires. The lip biting, the wild eyes, the twisted grimace are all just a little off, a little too much. This isn’t Burtonesque (Richard not Tim) scenery chewing; just a young actress a little out of her depth. Beckinsale is more convincing as she realizes her mistake, and argues desperately – hope over judgment – that she’ll just explain that they didn’t do anything wrong.

The literally shadowy prosecutor.

They finally meet with a local lawyer who tells them that there was no one named Nick Parks registered at the hotel, and that combined with Darlene’s “confession” is enough evidence to get them convicted. Now, just for the record, there is no debating the fact that they were carrying drugs in their knapsack, so the only question is who put it there. In the absence of physical evidence or a confession from someone else, the girls are toast. I’ll actually come back to this issue later, but the point is that the girls may have been naive, stupid, reckless, or some other adjective, but “innocent” ain’t one of them except in one unlikely scenario. Indeed, I think this is the point that tripped up a lot of reviewers. This is not, at its core, a movie about innocents being mistreated by an unfair foreign justice system, and happily Brokedown Palace has the common sense to realize that – unlike Midnight Express which insists on portraying Billy as a virtual martyr. While awaiting trial, Alice and Darlene are sent to the central prison.

Though the jail was dark and murky, the prison is much more reasonable, even though its nickname Brokedown Palace suggests something grittier. Basically, it is a large building, with a central courtyard which houses the women. At night, they are huddled into a large open-air cell with a few dozen other women. The female guards are strict, but not arbitrary. The food does suck; it is comprised of some sort of nasty gruel. Oddly, the lunchroom contains a big pill of fruits and vegetables. When our heroines eye the produce, one of the other inmates (“Prisoner Shub” played by Indhira Charoenpura) encourages them to help themselves. Big mistake. The guards come down on the girls like a ton of bricks, beating Alice’s palms with a rod. It turns out that the produce has to be “earned.” Uh oh. I was sure this was going to be a hook for the introduction of more exploitative elements, but actually, it isn’t. Apparently the girls earn privileges by doing laundry and knitting and so on. Aside from Shub, the other prisoner hardly seem to bother the girls at all.

The prison looks ominous when they first arrive at night, but during the it isn’t that bad.

The girls hook up with the only two other foreigners in the place, a blond British woman (credited as “English Prisoner” and played by Amanda De Cadenet unforgettable as “Hooker #2″ in Blue Flame (1993)) and a black chick from the Caribbean (credited as “Jamaican Prisoner” and played by Bahni Turpin, who also starred into the 1994 Anne Heche WIP quasi-spoof Girls in Prison). The Caribbean woman is, of course, chock full of Island Wisdom. She advises the girls to find freedom inside themselves. Hmmm, the girls decide to pursue other more concrete avenues first. The girls also find out that there are two ways to freedom – one is to contact “Yankee Hank” who is apparently some sort of ex-pat lawyer, the other is to bribe the head matron Velie (Beulah Quo, who also had a role in the 1994 b-movie classic Bad Girls) with $100. Of course, the bribery route carries with it the risk of discovery and an extra 15 years tacked onto the prison sentence.

The girls are not yet desperate enough to pursue extra-legal options. Their trial is still upcoming, and Darlene’s dad shows up to provide support… or something. He arrives at visiting hour, and tries to talk to his daughter. This is complicated by the fact that the only contact prisoners get with visitors is by shouting at them across a several yard gap separating the prisoner’s and visitor’s enclosures. With all the other inmate similarly shouting at their visitors, the scene is chaotic. Still, he does his best to reassure Darlene that he will get her released. He then asks to speak to Alice.

Alice gives Darlene’s dad a few choice words.

He starts off almost nice, but it is obvious he’s got something to say. Soon, Darlene’s dad (Doug Davis, played by Tom Amandes) is lambasting Alice for being irresponsible and getting his good girl into trouble. Indeed, he’s pretty sure he know what happened, namely that Alice deliberately tried to smuggle drugs. As evidence he reminds Alice of various and sundry childhood transgressions. Needless to say, this verbal assault does little for Alice’s morale, especially since she’s loath to let her friend know what a creep her father is. And frankly, he is a creep. Remember, Alice is only 17 or 18. She’s, in short, a kid. Darlene’s father, angry or not, should have behaved with a little more compassion. Although, in fairness, the movie never treats Alice and Darlene as teenagers. They are sometimes giggly and sometimes reckless, but on the whole, they are both surprisingly mature for their ages, and since the film makers never seemed to realize how young their heroine’s were, it isn’t surprising that Davis doesn’t either. There is not much he can do initially other than offer his special brand of emotional support before the trial.

Darlene’s dad (right) tries to get the ambassador and Knox (left) involved in freeing his daughter.

Anyway, at trial, Darlene tries to recant her “confession” to no avail, and the girls get 33 years in prison each. You’d think that the problems two young American girls might face in getting used to a Thai prison would be plenty to fill an entire movie, but oh no, not in this one. Brokedown Palace is simply chock full o’ plot. I mean, seriously, it seems like the scriptwriter left the plot-o-matic on high and went out for jog because it would take me literally 15,000 words to actually describe and comment on everything that happens. Let me give a summary version:

Darlene’s dad goes to the U.S. embassy and meets with Roy Knox (Lou Diamond Phillips, an actor who is an ubiquitous as he is undistinguished). Knox is the local DEA representative at the embassy. Phillips’ portrayal of Knox is frankly confusing. Sometimes he comes off as hardbitten and cynical. Sometimes he seems like a boozy clown. Still other times he seems dangerous and conspiratorial. Does Knox think the girls are guilty? Is he hiding something? Even after watching the movie twice, I still find it difficult to reconstruct what he is thinking in any given scene. As clichéd as it might seem, Phillips would have done well to ask the director “what’s my motivation?” every once in a while. I think that Knox knows that the girls were sorta set up, but I think he also thinks the girls were running drugs. It turns out that both these things are possible given later revelations.

“Yankee” Hank comes on the scene — thus ENDING THE FLASHBACK. He visits the girls in prison, and advises them to start writing their priests, congressmen, etc. back home to tell them about their plight. Probably a good idea frankly, although the girls seem unaccountably dubious. It is almost as if they had never heard about such a thing as writing a letter to a congressman. Hank also calls up Darlene’s dad – who is back home by now oddly enough – and asks for $15,000 to work to get the girls a new trial. Davis seems reticent about handing over the money…. Not suspicious of Hank’s credentials really, but rather almost doubtful that it is worth $15,000 to get his daughter a new trial. Hmmm.

Hank reviews their case and finds a number of discrepancies. First, it turns out that the girls were convicted of carrying six kilos of heroin, when it is pretty obvious that their knapsack contained no more than one-third that amount. I’ll come back this issue. Second, his wife Yon (Jacqueline Kim), also a lawyer, figures out that the key to the case might be to find out who bought the girls’ plane tickets to Hong Kong — presumably Nick Parks. Um, yup, that seems like an important data point. But as Hank points out, finding Parks “isn’t a magic bullet.” Right, ‘cause regardless of whether Parks exists, the girls were still in possession of two kilos of drugs, which is a serious crime even if you’re just a courier.

It turns out that after telling Nick that he didn’t know what he was missing, Alice may have proceeded to demonstrate on that faithful day. When Hank goes snooping around the hotel, he find a maid who identifies Parks as a guest, but she also identifies the woman she saw with him as Alice. Later Alice will claim that although Nick came onto her, she turned him down. This spin is hard to reconcile with the fact that an eyewitness placed her at Parks’ hotel with him.

Bill Pullman, looking either suave or constipated. You decide.

Okay, so what do we have? We have a sideplot involving a shady DEA man. We have another sideplot involving Yankee Hank, the girls, and his fee. We have another sideplot involving the discrepancies in the girls’ case. And we have yet another open question about whether Alice slept with Nick and whether Darlene will find out. The reason I call all of these sideplots is that in a way they serve as misdirection for the key question in the movie which is, “How did the drugs get in the knapsack?” Because, actually, that is the only real issue in the movie.

Before we can resolve that key question, all the other plotlines continue to wind forward. Alice has to convince her dad to contribute his share of Hank’s fee, but he seems to feel that his daughter is guilty and doomed anyway, so why shouldn’t he keep the money? Nice. Alice prevails and gets Hank his retainer. Hank manages to get the girls a new trial and presents evidence of the discrepancies in the police case, but the prosecutors quickly turn things around by calling as a witness the waiter from the pool… you know, the one who caught them trying to charge drinks to a phony room number. Before you can say “gotcha” the judge dismisses the appeal by pointing out that the girls are thieves and liars and likely guilty regardless of the minor discrepancies in the case against them.

They never let Darlene look too grungy despite her incarceration. It’d be bad for the box office, dontcha know, although they do have Alice smoking a joint.

Okay, back in prison, Alice slips into depressions. She lolls around smoking dope and muttering cynically. Darlene, in the meantime, is still frantically penning letter to various and sundry honchos, including the President of the United States. Alice scoffs at this, but Darlene’s a pretty cute chickie and Clinton was president at the time so if she’d included a picture she might have gotten somewhere… oops, scratch that, Darlene is a good 40 lbs underweight to have caught Bubba’s eye. Time passes and the girls fall into a routine, washing clothes and working with the other girls.

Meanwhile, on the outside, Yon and Hank are still pursuing the case. See, they aren’t really mercenaries, they really care about the girls. This is hardly an unexplained transformation as some critics have asserted; when we first meet them they’re working pro bono on an political asylum case after all. Yon tracks down another girl who fits the same profile as Alice and Darlene: young, pretty, and flying with a ticket bought on the same credit card as our heroines. Hank finds Beth Ann Gardner (Aimee Graham, the surprisingly plain sister of the luscious Heather Graham) looking bloated and strung-out in Honk Kong. Yeah, she’s a junkie, and she doesn’t really want to talk about “Skip” as she calls Nick.

Well, anyway, Hank doesn’t really get much out of Beth Ann, aside from the confirmation that Nick Parks or Skip or whateverthehell his name is exists. Hank then goes to the prison to share his discovery with his clients. In the course of this discussion, he also manages to tip off Darlene that Alice spent at least some time with Nick. This sets the girls at each other’s throats. Soon thereafter three of their former high school friends come to visit, looking mighty uncomfortable. They bring the girls presents of padded bras (?!) and then conclude the visit by telling the now-feuding girls that “At least you’re together. At least you have each other.” Oh, the irony! See, ‘cause they’re actually not talking to each other… so it’s like, ironic, or something….. Right, moving on…..

Darlene ain’t feeling so good. She wanders around the prison yard as if in a daze, and then she suddenly collapses. It turns out that a cockroach climbed into her ear leading to an infection. This is yet another example of the restlessness of the plot because this is a completely unnecessary diversion. Darlene goes to the infirmary, returns to the cell zonked out and is nursed back to health by Alice. But at the end of this, they don’t make up. Instead, they’re still barely speaking to each other, so what was the point?

Uh oh, the hole!

Actually, I know sort of what the point was, namely that this event pushes Alice over the edge and makes her decide to pursue the extralegal option of bribing Velie (Remember her? The corrupt guard mentioned when the girls first arrive in the prison?). Alice tries to talk Darlene into taking the risk. Alice blames herself for their situation. After all, she was the one who wanted to go to Thailand rather than Hawaii, and she was the one who tried to scam the drinks at the pools, and she was the one who wanted to accompany Nick to Hong Kong… oops, no, that was Darlene. Well, anyway, Alice self-flagellates (not literally you perverts!), and Darlene lets her, which strike me as a little odd, but more on that later. Finally, Alice manages to convince Darlene to go along with the escape attempt. Alice bribes Velie with money hidden in those bras her classmates delivered — echoing the money hidden in the photo album in Midnight Express.

The girls seem to massaging the grass in this scene, but I’m probably just misinterpreting.

That night, Alice gets up and requests to go to the bathroom. This being a reasonably civilized prison, the guard lets her out of the cell to use the facilities – most prisons, mind you, have toilets in the cells precisely because of the security problems of having inmates wandering around at night unattended. Anyway, Darlene gets up two minutes later and makes the same request. Again, the somewhat naive guard agrees, albeit reluctantly. Alice and Darlene then get a little help from Jamaican Prisoner who causes a minor commotion to allow the girls to scamper to the main gate. As prearranged, Velie is there to let them out, and moments later a car arrives to drive them to safety… or it would have if the prison officials weren’t waiting them to apprehend our would-be escapees. Instead the girls get slapped around a bit and tossed in “the hole” – basically an underground cell, where the two regard each other mutely. The prison break scene also goes nowhere. I mean, they try to escape, get caught, get an extra 15 years on their sentences, but that’s it. It’s a little self-contained episode. Indeed, the movie seems so desperate to cram in plot points that we never actually learn whether Velie got in trouble too or whether this was all a setup from the beginning or what.

While the prison break stuff is happening, Hank is still on the case. He talks some more to Knox and then to the Thai version of a drug czar, who tries to shake Hank down in return for helping the girls. The upshot of all of this is some new information. It turns out, gasp, that the girls were set up… well sorta. The girls were sacrificial lambs of some sort. Customs was tipped off that they were carrying drugs in return for allowing other couriers on the flight to proceed unmolested. It turns out that “Skip” has friends in high places and that his organization operates with the tacit consent of the Thai government as long as he allows the cops to catch some mules every once in a while. All of this is very interesting, but it is, remember, completely beside the point, which is whether the girls were knowingly carrying the smack or not. Regardless of the tip-off, the girls were carrying two keys of dope, and were liable to be discovered the first time they came across a decent security check or drug-sniffing dog. Even with the existence of an entire conspiracy – Nick, couriers, tip-offs, discrepancies in the evidence, falsified statements, corrupt bargains, etc. – if the girls were knowingly carrying the drugs, they were committing a criminal act. All the rest is misdirection… the kind of stuff a talented defense attorney might use to get an acquittal in an American-style legal system, but nothing which actually has any real bearing on their guilt in the real world.

Would you trust this man? He seems shady, shot low like that across a big desk.

That said, Hank uses this evidence of official malfeasance to cut a deal with the Thai government. In return for admitting their guilt, and hence covering up the corruption, they will receive a pardon and be allowed to go home. This seemed like an obvious set-up to me, so I can’t say I was surprised when the big moment arrived and the Thai minister of justice reneged at last minute with their confession in hand. But instead of giving up, Alice breaks free and throws herself at the mercy of the Thai king. Speaking in surprisingly fluent Thai — so good in fact that Thai prisons could easily put Berlitz out of business if they got into the intensive language training biz — Alice begs for the opportunity to speak. The king, surprised and impressed by her passion (and maybe hoping to get her into the sack) gives her permission to make her case.

The halls of justice.

Instead of claiming innocence, however, Alice takes all the blame on herself. She claims that she smuggled the drugs and that Darlene knew nothing about it. She offers to serve not only her sentence, but Darlene’s as well. Well, the king is much impressed by her offer. He doubts her sincerity however and suspects she may simply be sacrificing herself for her friend. He makes her a difficult offer. If she was lying about her guilt, then her show of self-sacrifice is sufficiently honorable that she would deserve a pardon. If, on the other hand, she’s telling the truth, then Darlene is innocent and should be freed. So Alice’s outburst suddenly give her the power to save herself, if she’ll only recant her admission, while if she sticks by it Darlene goes free. This is a surprisingly effective scene and well-handled by Danes. In the end, she sticks to her guns, and Darlene gets the pardon.

Then comes perhaps the most interesting scene in the movie. Darlene thanks her friend, but also wants to know why Alice confessed. Alice refuses to answer, laying out the dilemma: If she confirms she packed the drugs, Darlene will hate her forever. If she recants, Darlene won’t be able to enjoy her freedom knowing that Alice took the rap unfairly. While this may seem ambiguous, it actually isn’t. There are precisely three scenarios to explain the drugs in the knapsack:

1. Darlene could have done. Little miss goody-two-shoe, having been given the boinking of her young lifetime willingly agreed to carry the drugs for her new stud lover. Maybe plausible at one level, but in the end it doesn’t hold water. First, when the girls arrive in prison, Darlene seems genuinely baffled about what is happening, so much so that she signs a “confession.” Second and most importantly, the very fact that she confronts Alice at the end means that Darlene doesn’t actually know the answer to who placed the drugs in the luggage.
2. The drugs could have been placed in the knapsack by the bellhop when he loaded the taxi as the girls headed off to the airport. The camera meaningfully lingers on him at one point, and he takes a suspiciously long time to load the trunk. This scenario seems implausible too simply because there is no evidence that Nick/Skip had any contact with the girls’ hotel. Even if he knew where the girls were staying, it seems unlikely that he would have been able to co-opt the bellhop so quickly. It would have been reckless as a Westerner for him to approach a local with such a risky scheme. Plus, Nick’s MO is to seduce young women, not bribe young men. Anyway, this scenario might actually be the filmmaker’s preferred answer, but I find it unsupportable based on what transpires on-screen.
3. Alice could have planted the drugs. She’s already portrayed as sort of jealous about Darlene — who is richer, smart, and more striking. She clearly resents Darlene hooking up with Nick, and there is good reason to assume that Alice got closer to Nick than she admits when the two were at his hotel together. Plus, she is more reckless — she’s the one who wanted to go to Thailand, and sneak into the swanky hotel, and scam the drinks, and try to bribe the guard to escape. Once they get arrested, Alice is also the one who refused to sign the confession. Why? It is just because she is more savvy? Or is that knowing of her own guilt, she was extra wary? And why is she so happy at the end when she is still in prison? She claims it is because she knows that Darlene and Hank will keep fighting for her freedom, but come on. At best, she’d be merely resigned. She is relieved, not happy. The truth has set her free because she no longer feels the guilt for having gotten her friend in trouble. So my reading is that Alice resented Darlene for landing Nick. In response she slept with him and agreed to serve as a mule in order to win him over. In the end, she tells the truth, not a spectacular lie.

Kate is cute and all, but maybe this would have been more interesting with a more adventurous actress as one of the two leads.

In short, Brokedown Palace is not about two innocents locked away by a corrupt process. It is about a young, reckless woman finally coming to terms with her own shortcomings. In a sense, this is the first step in her taking control of her life again, and her satisfaction at the end comes from that understanding. That is my assessment from the text, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what the filmmakers thought they were doing. Maybe this was originally conceived of as a Rashomon-style mystery. There is a sense that each of the main participants — Alice, Darlene, Nick, and Hank — have different sets of knowledge about events and motivations. And yet, there is surprisingly little in the way of characters trying to puzzle out what happened. Alice and Darlene exchange a few brief barbs about the knapsack, but we never see a sustained effort to comprehend the situation. Maybe it was supposed to be a movie about Alice and her inner demons (as I’ve suggested) that got derailed in screenwriting conferences with the producers and director demanding more “action” leading to the hyperactive plot. Maybe it was supposed to be grittier and more exploitative, but got cleaned up when they cast “nice girl” actresses like Danes and Beckinsale. Maybe it was originally conceived as as a Midnight Express remake, only to get toned down by concerns over political correctness and a desire for a PG-13 rating. Really, I can’t tell. The fact is that what appears on screen seems incomplete and unfocused.

This is a decent movie, on the whole, but really doesn’t have much to recommend it. As I’ve mentioned, the plot is a bit too muddled given the ultimate payoff. Worse, because the movie lacks focus, it is largely unable to build up any real suspense leading up to the conclusion. In addition, the movie eschews virtually every exploitative element: No shower scenes, no catfights (even though in “Prisoner Shub” there is a natural adversary), no on-screen sex, zippy. It’s a women in prison movie for prudes. Still, it is well acted and competently directed. It’s just, well, blah.