Brokedown Palace

After graduating from high school, best friends Alice Marano and Darlene Davis take a trip to Thailand, despite some reluctance from Darlene who tells her dad they are going to Hawaii. While there, they meet a captivating Australian man (who calls himself Nick Parks); unknown to them, Nick is a drug smuggler. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and persuades Alice to take him up on his offer to treat them both to a side trip to Hong Kong. While boarding their flight at Don Mueang International Airport, the girls are detained by the Thai police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin, which they insist must have been planted by Nick. They are interrogated and Darlene signs a confession written in Thai, believing it to be a transcript of her statement confirming she is innocent. At their trial, they are sentenced to 33 years in prison. Alice and Darlene are advised to seek out Hank Greene, an expatriate American attorney living in Thailand. He tracks down another girl who had been used as an unwitting drug mule by a man named Skip K. Carn, whom he deduces to be the same person as Parks, since each name is an anagram of the other. Hank discovers Parks tipped off the Thai police about Alice and Darlene as a distraction to make sure his other mules could get through. Darlene learns that Alice was with Nick the day of the trip to Hong Kong and believes that she agreed to help smuggle the heroin. She tells Alice she has ruined her life; Darlene's father also blames Alice since she was always causing trouble as a young child. As time goes by, Darlene begins to struggle with the violence and squalor of prison. When she becomes ill after a cockroach crawls into her ear, Alice pays a guard to arrange for both girls to escape, but they are caught and their sentences are extended. Warned that Parks has influential friends in the Thai government, Hank arranges a deal with a corrupt prosecutor to secure a pardon for the girls if they recant their claim about his involvement and take full responsibility for smuggling the drugs. The girls agree, but the prosecutor double-crosses them. Knowing Darlene will not survive in prison, Alice tearfully takes the blame and begs the King of Thailand to allow her to serve both sentences in exchange for letting Darlene go. The deal is accepted and Darlene is released. She promises to continue working with Hank to try to free Alice. In a voiceover, which is a tape recording to Hank, Alice tells him not many people will understand why she made her decision to take the blame, but says it was the right thing to do. ==Cast==

Development Producer Adam Fields was inspired to make the film based on interviews he conducted with young American women serving life sentences in a Thailand prison for drug-related offenses, as well as with U.S. Embassy and Drug Enforcement Agency officials in Bangkok. Fields said the idea traces back to "'the self-assurance and naive arrogance I certainly had as an American teenager when I wanted to go to London or Amsterdam or Morocco and I said to my parents, 'I'm 16, I'm grown up, I ride the New York subways—what could happen?'" Fields developed the story with screenwriter David Arata, who expanded it into a screenplay. However, some panoramas and views were filmed in Bangkok. Manila-Ninoy Aquino International Airport's Ninoy Aquino terminal (Terminal 1) was used as a stand in for Don Mueang International Airport. The prison scenes were shot inside the Sanctuary Center for Psychotic Female Vagrants, a mental asylum for women operated by the DSWD in Mandaluyong, Manila. Meanwhile, Claire Danes said in an interview that scenes were often interrupted by wailing women. Controversy Claire Danes caused controversy when she made derogatory comments regarding Manila during filming. In an interview for the April 1998 issue of Vogue, Danes called the city "ghastly and weird". Kim Atienza, a Manila city council member, dismissed these initial comments, reasoning they "could be chalked up as 'mere irresponsible statements of youth.'" Danes issued an apology, explaining "because of the subject matter of 'Brokedown Palace,' the cast was exposed to the darker and more impoverished places of Manila,” rather than the tourist-friendly areas. == Reception ==

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "The heart of the film is in the performances of Danes and Beckinsale". Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote "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' fine performance." He concluded the film "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", and "at the very least, [the film] offers a disturbing reminder that being a willfully ignorant ugly American abroad with an attitude could be a recipe for disaster." The film was a box-office disappointment, grossing only $10 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. ==See also==