Rating: 
Summary: Grim, gritty... but not great
Review: I understand that Claire Danes has a number of films in the proverbial can that should see the light of day in 2002. For those of us who remain forever hopeful that she'll find a vehicle worthy of her talents, this is cause for hope. For many, her best role to date is still Angela Chase, the precocious, vulnerable and ringingly authentic 90s teen on the series "My So-Called Life." The movies have been, against all predictions, less kind to the young actress. She usually manages to turn in a solid performance, but even the prestige pieces, like "Romeo+Juliet" and "Les Miserables" don't really show her off her talents to the best possible effect. Big productions tend to swallow her up. For this reason, I have my doubts about the upcoming film version of Michael Cunningham's "The Hours"--where she'll possibly be one more minor luminary in a stellar cast. "Brokedown Palace" is a flawed film, but a reasonably good vehicle for Danes and her co-star, British actress Kate Beckinsale. As an object lesson in the dangers posed to American youth traveling abroad, this film is pretty effective. I don't doubt that many young viewers will identify with the two recent high school graduates, who travel on vacation to Bangkok and wind up as pawns in an elaborate drug smuggling scam, facing 35 year prison terms in a filthy Thai jail. Strong stuff, and the actresses make the best of it. Certainly, in that sense, it's a better than average "teen movie." It has substance (abused and otherwise), but it still lacks the pacing and the punch of similarly themed efforts like "Midnight Express." See it for two excellent performances by two very gifted young actresses. But it could have been something much more. Director Jonathan Kaplan has benefitted before from sterling performances by brilliant young actresses ("The Accused" garnered Jodie Foster her first Oscar), but this one needs more of a kick-start than even Danes and Beckinsale can manage.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: Dispite the great performance that Danes puts on, this film is terrible. The place it was filmed was sickening and the plot is worhthless. Not enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: A must watch for teenage girls
Review: We are Americans, living in Tokyo, Japan, for the last decade. I watched this film with my 17 year old daughter. This story sends a powerful message to parents. Don't let your teenage daughters go off on their own without strong words of wisdom and advise. Any blond or brown haired rich looking "girl" is want for exposure to others. Anyone of non-Asian descent stands out in a crowd and can be spotted a hundred feet away. We are prime targets, and it is assumed that we won't understand the laws, nor the punishments for disobeying them, which are far stricter than in America. In most countries in Asia, and SE Asia, there is no "second chance".
The message...don't even think you won't be a target.
Thirty three years in a stink hole with no heat, and limited ability to communicate with the captors is no picnic. Your life as you knew it is basically over.
The film portrays this with candidness, but too much softness. It is viewed too much through western eyes. It is not until the bitter end, that the reality of the situation sets in.
The film should not be so much a lesson in friendship and loyalty, but a lesson in "living in the real world". Something that many American's have no concept of...even after the horrific events of Sept 11.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Film
Review: I loved this movie!! I really got involved in the movie, I really felt bad the characters in the movie. They are trapped in this foreign prison for a crime they didn't committ and everyone knows they didn't committ it but because they have no proof, they will not let them out of prison! It shows a true test of friendship. The sad part is that the judicial system in a lot of foreign countries really do follow the procedures shown in this film, it makes me feel lucky to live in the United States.
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: This movie is excellent. One thing I love about it is that it shows true friendship. I admitt, it could have been better, and I actually thought it was going to be. But, if you consider all of the terrible movies out there, this is great.
Rating: 
Summary: A Joke of a Movie
Review: My wife wanted to rent this video, and against my better judgment I agreed. When the two main characters decided to go to Thailand instead of Maui (with the knowledge of one girl's father) after their high school graduation, I said to my wife "I'd be damned if I let my daughter go to Thailand with one other girl at the age of 18". My wife said "I'd be damned if I let my daughter go to Maui with one other girl at the age of 18". So apparently even the "good" girl's parents didn't review their daughter's travel documents with her. Of course she didn't leave a phone number at which she could be reached, and apparently if she did her parents never called the number to check up on her. The first they knew she was in Thailand was after she had been arrested!
This was only one ludicrous sequence in a very bad, very stupid movie. My favorite scene - this one was LOL - was when the Claire Danes character got arrested and screamed at the cops "I'm an American citizen! I want a lawyer!" All I could think of was "Bang on your high chair all you want, honey, but you're playing by their rules now." These girls were so clueless and arrogant that I found myself rooting for the Thai prison guards. If you're a female between the ages of 18 and 25, this movie might be for you. If you fall into any other demographic group, don't buy it, don't rent it. Run like hell at the mention of its name.
Rating:
Summary: To Kill Time, a movie worth seeing
Review: this movie was powerful and intense. It's also very truthful...I'm glad to have seen it, it woke me up to things I've had my awareness closed to. It also happens to have a great soundtrack!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic performances
Review: Claire Danes, Kate Beckinsale, and Bill Pullman do a great job at their roles. They really developed the characters so you could feel what they were going through. The characters weren't flat and two-dimensional. I think this is the first movie starring teenage girls that aren't portrayed as airhead ditzes. The story was chilling, but most interesting was how their friendship survived. Beautiful music, beautiful location, it was overall a beautiful movie.
Rating:
Summary: Brokedown Palace - guilty of good content?
Review: The premise of 'Brokedown Palace' is one that instantly uneases its audience - incarcaration in a foreign jail. Although this issue has been depicted before, this is the first film of its kind to have two female leads as its main focus. Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale star as two close friends who travel to Thailand in search of adventure, fun and most of all freedom. Along the way they fall for the same mysterious stranger and throw caution to the wind in competing for his affections. After a few days in his company the girls are invited on a trip to Hong Kong so that they can accompany him on a business trip. Trusting his seemingly honest motives, the girls agree and arrange to meet him out there once his work is completed. Once they arrive at the airport they are searched by Thai officials and are found with large quantities of narcotics. Arrested by an army of officers and escorted to a disgustingly dirty holding cell, they are left with nothing except each other, a few hundred cockroaches and a language barrier. It is here that the drama unfolds and the provocative nature of 'Brokedown Palace' emerges. The main question raised by the film is of the girls innocence, but the interesting part is that it is never really answered. After fruitless attempts of trying to clear their names ( with the help of expatriate lawyer Bill Pullman ) self - sacrifice becomes the last resort. Here is the films strength - usually tales like this have a black or white ending, but 'Brokedown Palace' delivers a thought-provoking finale that is highly original in it's field. The only criticisms that I would make about it relate more to location and post - production, than casting or performances. For a start the prison itself is far too tame to create sufficient tension for the audience. Alice ( Danes ) receives a beating from a guard that resembles more of a smack on the legs, and the scariest inmate seems to be a trouble-making adolescent. More time should have been shifted away from the focus of Pullman's character and placed on a much more valuable aspect of the film - the bond between the girls. Neither seem to be bothered by the 33-year prison sentence, nor the mandatory prison haircuts they are forced to have. Not the best idea when trying to capture the horrific conditions and prospects the characters both face. Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale excell in their respective roles, as do most of the other actors. But over-editing of decent 'gritty' scenes in the prison create its downfall. Overall 'Brokedown Palace' is a good film with excellent performances by it's leading ladies, but unfortunately a rather lightweight and lacklustre final edit rob it of its potential. The trailer for 'Brokedown Palace' is literally more scary than the actual film, but other factors such as the love-triangle that emerges, and the strained relationships that surface between the girls and their parents help make it a decent film with pockets of credibility.
Rating:
Summary: Nature of guilt
Review: I thought this was a fantastic movie. To the other comments given I want to add only this: When one of the falsely imprisoned girls decides to tell the king that she is guilty so that her friend may go free, it's only the culmination of several events calculated to build a false sense of guilt in the one who stays behind. It is tempting, and heartbreaking, to imagine that this girl who falsely gives herself up has come to the conclusion that, she really is sufficiently guilty to spend her life in prison after all, just on "general principles", as it were. With regard to the drugs themselves, it seemed to me that the girl who "confessed" had had it driven into her, by court appearances and months of incarceration, that she was simply guilty because the drugs were in her backpack, since her assertions that she didn't know they were there were useless. Though this takes place in a foreign country I found the idea of such severe punishment for an unknowing pawn in a crime chilling nonetheless.
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