Brokedown Palace (1999) – DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Claire Danes, Bill Pullman, Kate Beckinsale, Lou Diamond Phillips
screenplay by David Arata
directed by Jonathan Kaplan

by Bill Chambers It’s somebody’s idea of a cruel joke: hire two of the most beautiful actresses in the known universe and slather them in grime and grit and stink for the better part of 100 minutes. While the characters don’t seem to mind (“I’ve had worse haircuts,” remarks Claire Danes’s Alice Marano of being sentenced to 33 years in a foreign prison–though her bob-crop is quite fetching), the intended audience for Brokedown Palace–teenagers unfamiliar with Midnight Express–had a rather adverse reaction to the thought of watching a couple of starlets wallow in a world of piss and roaches and Bill Pullman lawyers and Lou Diamond Phillips embassy officials, if the pitiful box-office is any indication. So why did they bother sanitizing it for younger viewers?

In the mood for adventure, Alice and Darlene Davis (Kate Beckinsale)–the former a self-proclaimed rebel, the latter a daddy’s girl–secretly change their summer-before-college vacation plans from Hawaii to Thailand, where they meet a swarthy Australian charmer by the name of Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine). Having agreed to catch up with him in Hong Kong for a weekend, Alice and Dar are caught at the airport with a few kilos of heroin stashed in their belongings. Were they unwitting accomplices in Nick’s smuggling operation? Thai police officials reshape Dar’s statement into a confession, and so the best friends wind up in prison together. Their only hope for freedom is “Yankee Hank” Green (Pullman), a U.S.-born ambulance chaser practicing abroad.

Alice sends Hank her (uniquely unconcerned-sounding) oral account of the events leading up to the arrest, although whence she obtained a taperecorder, blank cassettes, and an hour or so of downtime is never explained. Hank takes the case only for a significant retainer from Darlene’s moneyed father but becomes involved in the plight of Alice, in particular, to the point where money is no longer motivating him. (Maybe it’s that haircut.) This is one of those movies where a washed-up lawyer takes an unwinnable case and learns to love Lady Justice again. His legal wrangling may save them both, so long as he can prove the existence of Nick Parks.

Brokedown Palace could be so much more devastating under the R-rating. Its soft depiction of a Thai prison contradicts well-documented and inexcusable conditions of confinement abroad. Our stars are inconvenienced by the filth rather than mortified by it. They don’t even curse! The only glimmer of menace comes from an anti-American inmate, but her evil is resigned to a few leering close-ups. An ex-drug dealer, Warren Fellows, recently published a memoir of his time served at the so-called Bangkok Hilton (The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison), where he was forced to bathe in human waste up to his neck for disrespecting authority; where he contracted AIDS from sharing unsterilized needles (the very same drugs that won him his conviction were provided to the prisoners to distract them from thoughts of suicide). Alice flips a prison guard the bird and pays no price, as if she has movie-star immunity. She also smokes pot–once–and Dar reprimands her like a nun. About 12 years ago, Jonathan Kaplan directed The Accused, an unflinching if telefilmish portrait of a gangrape and its aftermath, but he shuts our eyes to anything outside the realm of PG-13 in Brokedown Palace. Perhaps a grittier film would have resulted from an in-depth exploration of the current MPAA-devised ratings system, a prison all its own.

The movie picks up steam with the entrance of the lovably cranky and authentically weary Pullman–the only cast member who appears to be speaking his mind instead of representing a position. Hank’s investigation proves more engaging than the girls’ suffering, and a smarter move might’ve backgrounded Alice and Dar’s story to his own, that of a grumpy, married expatriate (his wife also practices law) with a greedy reputation that proceeds him. We don’t learn nearly enough about Hank, but the bits we infer from Pullman’s casting are tantalizing. Danes, so emotionally vibrant on the unceremoniously cancelled “My So-Called Life”, should stop playing toughies from the wrong side of the tracks (see–or rather, don’t see–The Mod Squad), because she tends to come off as disaffected and superficial when she’s trying for hardened and impure. Her one great scene, a magnanimous plea for redemption, arrives too late in the picture, long after there’s any hope of dimensionalizing Alice. Beckinsale is entirely unbelievable as Dar: this spunky Brit has no business doing American milquetoast. Perhaps she should have swapped roles with Danes–or bailed out of the project altogether. To top things off, the female leads have no chemistry; there was reportedly offscreen indifference between Danes and Beckinsale, and it shows. In a closing voiceover, Alice laments that we probably won’t understand her inclination to sacrifice herself for Alice, and indeed we don’t, as their lack of spark ultimately mutes the film’s themes of devotion.

THE DVD
Fox brings Kaplan’s latest to DVD in a non-anamorphic, 2.35:1 letterboxed video transfer with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. The image quality is quite good yet I’ve seen better from Fox, and their lack of 16×9 support remains disappointing. Colours are generally accurate and well-saturated but they also occasionally smear. Moreover, while I’d never describe the picture as soft, the finest details are tough to discern, especially in darker moments. Edge-enhancement is thankfully minimal, and compression artifacts are not glaringly evident.

The DD audio is light on bass except during the techno interludes. Music merges with the surrounds periodically–although this is a stereo-centric soundtrack, with songs and effects mostly relegated to the front mains. Dialogue is suitably loud throughout. A Dolby Surround version is also included, as are cast bios, a trailer, and animated menus.

100 minutes; PG-13; 2.35:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; Region One; DVD-5; Fox