Brokedown Palace

Two American friends on a final pre-college fling (Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale) learn a hard lesson in bad judgment when a smooth-talking suitor sets them up as heroin smugglers and things go very wrong, landing the girls in the bowels of a Thai prison, where they embark on a 33-year sentence. One of those would-be gritty issue dramas that stabs itself in the heart by assuming the audience can only handle so much grit, director Jonathan Kaplan's version of Thai prison life is decidedly influenced by MTV: the girls sport beatific smiles and vaguely drab pixie haircuts, the heavily-filtered sunlight streaming into an exercise yard looks suspiciously like cinematic eye-candy, and the soundtrack is non-stop (think: techno-Thai meets Lilith Fair). Sequences that should have had dramatic punch, instead emerge as elaborate music videos, with the actresses coming across more as cute models than tormented characters. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)