i rented " brokedown palace " last night blind , having heard nothing about it beforehand , and i enjoyed it immensely despite some flaws . 
for anyone wishing to have the same experience i would suggest reserving judgement of the movie until viewing it in its entirety . 
that is no easy task . 
superficially , it bears an unfortunate ( and not necessarily unintended ) resemblance to several other movies , notably " return to paradise " and " midnight express . " 
as a result nearly every review of " brokedown palace " i subsequently read became hopelessly entangled in making the obvious comparisons . 
the consequence was nearly universal condemnation , which is a shame as this is a fine film . 
for those who have yet to view the movie , let me say that it is not an attempt to portray the nightmarish reality of the third world criminal justice system ( as was " midnight express " ) nor completely the moral dilemma and examination of the meaning of friendship and humanity that was the heart of " return to paradise . " 
in my view , if this film is to be compared to any other source it would have to be joseph conrad's acclaimed novel , " lord jim . " 
problematically , the basic storyline seems more than familiar : two american teenage girls on vacation are sentenced to spend most of their lives in a thai prison for drug smuggling in an obvious set-up involving a suave con-man , a shadowy criminal conspiracy and a corrupt third world " justice " system . 
the girls are alice ( claire danes ) and darlene ( kate beckinsale ) . 
they're life-long buddies who planned a high-school graduation trip to hawaii , and then secretly changed their destination to the more exotic thailand without telling their parents . 
once there , they find a $6 hotel and go sight-seeing , which includes sneaking into a luxury hotel to sip expensive drinks poolside . 
they get caught trying to charge the bill to the wrong room , a minor transgression which will later come back to haunt them , but they are saved from hotel security by a charming , friendly australian , nick ( daniel lapaine ) , who takes care of the bill with a more polished execution of the girl's scam . 
he then proceeds to separate the girls and make smooth moves , first toward alice , then toward darlene . 
by now alarm bells are going off among viewers . 
the ever-present nick is too slick and his stories don't add up ( to us ) --the girls , of course , are too naive to notice . 
long before it happens , we're anticipating the inevitable disappearance of the fast-talking smuggler and the arrest of our teenaged sitting-ducks at the airport en route to hong kong caught holding the bag ( literally ) containing heroin . 
just as predictably , the thai police and courts do their part in meting out injustice and our trusting tourists are prison-bound for a long stretch . 
left unanswered is the red herring issue of whether one or the other of the girls was a willing accomplice . 
for those in need of a ready answer , might i suggest closer scrutiny of the bell hop at the girl's fleabag hotel . 
as one door after another to their comfortable former life is closed , the girls and their families turn in desperation to the noiresque expatriate lawyer/fixer " yankee hank " ( bill pullam ) and his thai-born partner-wife . 
a recurring element of the movie is the tension between appearance and reality as expressed in one of the film's tag lines , " who do you trust ? , " and hank is no exception although seasoned movie- goers and those familiar with pullman's oeuvre will find few surprises . 
much of the remainder of the movie is a smorgasbord of intriguing themes incompletely explored in short-hand fashion . 
lou diamond phillips , for instance , plays a delightfully sinister and callous dea agent who , while appearing to be casually accommodating to hank , withholds vital information at crucial moments . 
is he part of a wider conspiracy ? 
with an inherently powerful , if somewhat tired premise , the film offers by parts a riveting courtroom drama , a prison story , and a potential character study of american teens , their relationship , and what constitutes friendship between them . 
the result is reasonably engaging and suspenseful , with the girls' interaction , hank's investigation , and the various trials and hearings , offering hope for their release , delivering tension--as does the foredoomed possibility of their escape . 
if " brokedown palace " has a major flaw , it is its creators' tendency , like time-constrained tourists , to take frequent side trips down fascinating alleys only to reverse direction half-way down and return to the story's main avenue . 
and , if that were all there was to " brokedown palace , " it wouldn't be a very good movie . 
but i believe the writers and director were after bigger game and , in this , they succeeded . 
for the main theme of the movie , like the proffered name of its location , is freedom--in all its permutations . 
ultimately , the other sub-themes may be considered window dressing . 
young and pretty , alice ( danes ) is an old soul ; a wild , streetwise teenager with a thirst for freedom and adventure . 
presented as a perfect blend of yin and yang , dark and light , is her cautious best friend , darlene ( beckinsale ) . 
clear-eyed and straightforward , alice is more complex than her friend . 
she comes from a poorer background , has a reputation for getting into trouble and has lost the trust of everyone ( including her own father ) . 
whereas darlene's life is " on-track , " aimed at college , marriage , kids , a career , a suburban home , middle age and " fulfillment , " alice's is uncertain , unfocused , and yearning . 
one poignant scene in the film shows darlene shouting across an open moat to visitors--friends and relatives from home , whose lives continue while hers is in limbo . 
tellingly , alice is present but not included . 
just as revealing of their different personalities , when alice and dar first come to thailand , the openness and delight on alice's face doesn't read as simple naivet ? ; the way she stands up and stretches as she and her friend ride along in a small boat , reaching toward the sun , she really is drinking in what she believes to be freedom , while " dar " remains seated in the shade . 
 " brokedown palace " begins with an admission by alice of her guilt in a tape recording sent to hank . 
however unintentional , it's all alice's fault . 
she's responsible for persuading her friend to lie to her parents , to sneak away from the safety of hawaii to the perils of thailand , to try the petty scam which places them in the clutches of the evil nick . 
 ( in case one misses this point in the inevitable confusion of a film's beginning , darlene obligingly reminds alice of her culpability in prison . ) 
dar , of course , is the willing dupe which , in her view , confers innocence . 
never mind that it was her coercion of a reluctant alice to accompany her to hong kong which placed them in police custody in the first place or that her naive confession sealed their fate . 
dar is innocent . 
it doesn't matter . 
alice is the subject of this movie . 
she and her journey toward personal freedom . 
along the way we are treated to an unsympathetic portrait of the shallow american culture which created these girls with their half-baked sensibilities and materialistic goals . 
in the end , that culture , like its representatives , " yankee " hank and dar's father ( a " man who knows how to grease the wheels " ) , proves as impotent as its government in the face of the girl's tragedy . 
thailand's culture , contrary to most opinion , comes off much better by comparison . 
it amazes me that reviewers argued this point at both extremes . 
i believe the filmmaker's view was that thai culture is vastly different from the american but not necessarily inferior . 
the thai ( with the sole exceptions of a corrupt official and a spiteful prison spy ) were uniformly consistent in their behavior and true to their principles . 
the girls were shown to be treated no better but certainly no worse than the native-born . 
their prison ( in stark contrast to the probable reality ) was no hellhole , being relatively clean and sunlit . 
the prison authorities demanded good hygiene , provided medical care when needed , and " hard manual labor " consisted of picking grass ! 
the thai guards were authoritarian ( what else ? ) but certainly not routinely sadistic . 
as for the thai justice system , the reasoning of the thai judges , during both an appeal hearing and in the film's penultimate scene was devastating in its logic and morality . 
'freedom' has many faces and " brokedown palace " explores many of them . 
in the extreme , we have freedom of the body and freedom of the spirit . 
some settle for the former alone while others remain imprisoned with an entire nation to roam without the latter . 
but freedom seldom comes without a price . 
which is why the movie's other tag lines are : " what is your dream ? " 
and " how far would you go ? " 
i believe i could make a good case for the interpretation that the person who attains freedom , incarcerated or not , by film's end is alice . 
she finds redemption and salvation through the acceptance of personal responsibility . 
i think the light bathing only her figure among the assembled prisoners in the final scene visually signals that fact . 
kate beckinsale's character might more properly be likened to the " released " temple bird referred to twice during the film , " trained to fly back to its cage . " 
as the thai magistrate observed in the film's climactic scene , the issue was always one of " character ; " and the jamaican prisoner made it clear that " freedom " is achieved within oneself . 
if one thinks back over the movie , which character was transformed by their experiences ? 
increasingly , the cinema landscape seems to have become littered with endless permutations of 'kung fu woman'--female characters virtually indistinguishable from male action figures . 
here , at last , is the story of a modern heroine . 
in reading the many user's comments , i was struck by what seems an unusual phenomenon : whether or not a person liked the movie , almost everyone praised the actors . 
think about that . 
when was the last time you came away from a motion picture possibly hating it , but raving about all the performances in it ? 
do yourself a favor : rent " brokedown palace " and watch it with a open mind . 
there's more there than meets the eye .