REVIEW:
In the tradition of Midnight Express and even Return To Paradise (which was just a year prior to this one,) comes another movie about Americans sentenced to prison time in a foreign country. While the idea might seem familiar, each movie actually has its own merit and appeal. In the case of this one, our two protagonists are falsely accused of a crime and setup by a drug dealer to take the fall at an airport so that the authorities don’t catch what he is actually up to. It might have been a cooler movie if we saw a little more of that… if we saw what the dealer was doing at the airport at the time. But instead this movie is mostly about the girls time in prison. And to that end, it is a pretty good film.
Alice and Darlene (Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale) both carry this thing, letting the audience experience the hardships through them, including bullying by other inmates and torture by the guards. All the while, lawyer Bill Pullman is trying to help them, searching for clues about the mysterious man who set them up, turning over every rock, and seeing what he can come up with. While he’s doing that, the girls are just trying to survive in this Thailand prison, and visits from different people back home don’t exactly help. Darlene’s father has a very memorable visit scene where he accuses Alice of being the reason why this all happened to his daughter. The movie takes us through multiple hearings and trials, and has an unexpected and very interesting ending. It’s a powerful, yet certainly upsetting movie.