Brokedown Palace

Brokedown Palace (1999) is a drama-thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale play Alice and Darlene, two American friends who arrive in Thailand for a post-graduation trip and end up facing thirty-three years in a Thai prison.

The setup is deceptively simple. A charming Australian stranger offers them a day trip to Hong Kong. At the airport, heroin is found in one of their bags. Both girls are arrested. Both claim they were set up. Bill Pullman plays the American lawyer who takes the case — and who slowly realizes the story he's been told may not be the whole story. What follows isn't a straightforward wrongful-imprisonment film. The friendship between the two women fractures under pressure in ways that feel uncomfortably real.

Kaplan refuses to resolve the ambiguity at the center of the story, which is what makes the film stick. It doesn't tell you who to believe. That's either a flaw or the point — depending on what kind of film you came for. Stream Brokedown Palace (1999) online on iFILM.