Last year saw the release of Joseph Reuben's heavy-handed and sporadically effective Return To Paradise. That film was brilliant compared to Brokedown Palace--an unconvincing foreign-prison drama that plays like a really bad movie of the week.

Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale play life-long pals who decide to take a vacation in Thailand. While there, they fall for a smooth-talking Aussie who convinces them to take a flight to Hong Kong. While at the airport, they are frisked and much to their surprise, their backpack is being used as a drug transport. Thus, our heroines are thrown in a nasty, prison hell-hole (ala Midnight Express) where their only hope is a down-on-his-luck defense lawyer, played by Bill Pullman (Independence Day).

Does the plot sound familiar? That's probably because it is. There is nothing fresh or exciting about this storyline. Danes is solid and Beckinsale gets the job done, but these are far from interesting characters. Beckinsale is the wholesome girl while Danes plays the bad girl.

What's particularly disheartening and unrealistic is that Danes' character isn't bad enough to deserve the fate that awaits her. Everyone treats her as if she's completely evil, when all the things she's done growing up were trivial (spilling paint, drinking under age, etc.) It makes the film's conclusion seem preposterous.

Pullman has himself in a delicate position at this point in his career. His last outing was the ludicrous Lake Placid. He's decent here, but itÕs an underwritten role. Director Jonathan Kaplan (E.R.) doesn't do a very good job pacing this dull film, and if it weren't for such a good cast, it would've been absolutely worthless.