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Brokedown Palace (12)

IT hasn't been a good year for relations between Thailand and Hollywood. First, the makers of the latest Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Beach, dug up a whole stretch of coastline when filming there, effectively destroying the local ecosystem.

Now comes Brokedown Palace, a tale of two American travellers - played by Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale - who end up in a Thai prison, accused of smuggling drugs. Thai justice is seen to be deaf to the girls' pleas - and its prisons are portrayed as brutal, staffed by cruel wardens and riddled with bribery. No wonder director Jonathan Kaplan filmed his movie in the Philippines rather than encountering the anger of the local authorities by going to Thailand itself.

But Kaplan steers clear of sensationalist Thai-bashing by concentrating on the changing relationship between the two young women. There's much to admire here: a teasing ambiguity throughout most of the film over whether the two girls are guilty or not - something that keeps their defence lawyer (played by Bill Pullman) guessing.

And there are two subtle and impressive performances from Danes as the feisty blue-collar high-school graduate and Beckinsale as her well-heeled travelling companion. There is even an appearance from former 80s wild child Amanda de Cadenet as a fellow prisoner, presumably banged up for the heinous crime of presenting The Word.

Hmm. Maybe Thai justice isn't so bad after all Edward Lawrenson Fanny and Elvis (15) Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill are likeable enough movies. But their success has had the unforgivable effect of triggering a proliferation of terrible romantic comedies by British film-makers, chasing the same money-spinning formula. Kay Mellor's new film, Fanny and Elvis, is the latest addition to this dreaded genre. The romance side of things is provided in the relationship between Kate (played by New Zealander Kerry Fox, whose Yorkshire accent is uncannily like Daphne's from Frasier) and Ray Winstone's loveable cockney geezer Dave.

With middle age advancing, Kate wants a baby and falls for Dave, who has already fathered a brood of kids from previous marriages. They fall in love, then they drift apart, only to fall back in love again. And then the film ends and we can all go home.

Where the comedy side of things is provided for is anyone's guess. It surely can't be in the stale, tired jokes Mellor offers us. Maybe it's the sign of a confident film industry that dross like this can pass through financiers' hands unnoticed. But if that's case, Fanny and Elvis will make you nostalgic for the uncommercial days of British cinema, when the best we could hope for was three low- budget, over-earnest art-house releases a year.

Edward Lawrenson Random Hearts (15) Director Sydney Pollack clearly intended his Random Hearts as a Brief Encounter for the 90s. Instead, this tale of an air crash and its aftermath winds up like a daytime soap with the brakes on.

Its star-crossed lovers are brittle New Hampshire congresswoman Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) and stoic internal affairs sergeant Dutch Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford, with startling ear stud). Poor Dutch and Kay - they're shattered when their respective spouses nose-dive into Chesapeake Bay; still more shattered when they realise the two were carrying on a long-standing affair.

"Sooner or later everybody knows everything," murmurs Ford at one point. In Random Hearts' case it's later - much later. The stars don't meet up until about 50 minutes in, and the rest of the tale is in no hurry to get where it's going.

In its finer moments, Random Hearts proves unflinching in its autopsy on grief and infidelity - and boasts a performance of ironclad restraint from Ford. But it gropes throughout for some sort of intensity. So Pollack's pic reclines in its pastel surrounds, taps a brogue to its meandering jazz soundtrack then finishes with a jarring spot of gun-play. Its prolonged whimpering goes out with a bang.

Xan Brooks

Copyright 1999
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