UNITED STATES: CLAIRE DANES AND KATE BECKINSALE SPEAK ABOUT THEIR ROLES AS TWO TEENAGES ENPRISONED IN THAI JAIL IN "BROKEDOWN PALACE"

Record ID: 388577

  • Title: UNITED STATES: CLAIRE DANES AND KATE BECKINSALE SPEAK ABOUT THEIR ROLES AS TWO TEENAGES ENPRISONED IN THAI JAIL IN "BROKEDOWN PALACE"
  • Date: 9th August 1999
  • Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 9, 1999) (RTN - ACCESS ALL) SOUNDBITE (English) CLAIRE DANES SAYING "Well the thing I most admired about Alice was, and still is I guess, her bravery. In the end she is, she sacrifices her life for her friend and confronts a lot of demons, pretty boldly and pretty honestly and that's something that I try to apply to my life and I think that's valuable to remember."
  • Embargoed: 24th August 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA6VI2C24QEDWA3ULE8BRZ4WTEM
  • Story Text: Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale play two innocent teenage American girls plunked into a Thai prison in "Brokedown Palace," the latest addition to a mini-genre of Yanks ensnared by corrupt Third World legal systems.
    Beginning with 1978's "Midnight Express," this format has also been explored in the recent "Red Corner" and "Return to Paradise."
    Producer/co-story writer Adam Fields and first-time screenwriter David Arata based their tale on numerous case histories involving young and often gullible Americans who have apparently been set up and then confined for long stretches in Southeast Asian prisons.
    Rather than an outraged expose at the unfairness or brutality of foreign judicial procedures, the picture focuses on the emotions and changes undergone by the two girls, best friends who unwittingly find themselves in horrific, seemingly intractable circumstances.
    Alice Marano (Danes) is a working class Ohio girl with lowly career prospects who proposes a blow-out trip with her lifelong pal, college-bound Darlene Davis (Beckinsale), to celebrate their high school graduation.Telling their parents their destination is Hawaii, they instead fly to more exotic Bangkok, where they are bailed out of a little jam by a good-looking, raffish Aussie, Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine), who offends the wilder, more readily available Alice by taking the serious and more cautious Darlene to bed instead.
    At the young man's prompting, the impressionable Darlene convinces the balky Alice to come along on a quick trip to Hong Kong, where they'll hook up with Nick.However, the girls get no further than the Thai airport, where their bags are searched and are found to contain cannisters of heroin.It's clear they've been used as "mules" by Nick, but that doesn't change the fact that they've been caught red-handed in a country that deals very harshly with drug traffickers.
    After a quick trial and fruitless intervention by Darlene's dad, the girls are sentenced to 33 years in a women's prison where, on balance, the filth seems like a bigger problem than the stern but relatively even-handed guards.The girls stay sane and vaguely optimistic by sticking together and trying to attract attention to their plight, finally enlisting the services of expatriate American attorney Hank Greene (Bill Pullman) and his Thai lawyer wife (Jacqueline Kim), whose limited success in uncovering inconsistencies, duplicity and corruption in the government's handling of the case is never quite enough to overcome the seemingly unbreakable hard line taken by the authorities.
    Much of the effort involves tracking down Nick Parks, who has vanished and was clearly using an alias.As a longtime resident, Hank knows the games local officials play, but he's still an outsider, and his creative efforts to gain leverage and make deals work only up to a point.Meanwhile, inside the pen, Darlene begins to crack, accusing her friend of ruining her life and refusing to talk to her for a time.Alice then engineers an escape attempt, which sets the stage for a dramatic final appeal for justice that is resolved by an exceptional act of self-sacrifice.
    Lou Diamond Phillips is in briefly as an unhelpful U.S.
    Embassy official.Veteran director Jonathan Kaplan helmed the production.
    Thai locations have been reproduced in the Philippines, although some scene-setting shots were actually shot in Bangkok.
    The film's title refers to a Grateful Dead song lyric.
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