Return to Paradise

This remake of Force Majeure (aka Uncontrollable Circumstances), a 1989 film with Alan Bates and Kristin Scott Thomas, recalls the prison plight depicted in Midnight Express (1978). Rambling around Asia, getting high and just having a good time, are three young men -- Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), Lewis ...more

Although it's hardly up to the level of the superlative Midnight Express, Return to Paradise offers a well-oiled Hollywood take on the venerable foreign-prisons-are-hell genre (see also: Papillon, Brokedown Palace). The script, by Batman Returns scribe Wesley Strick and Jennifer 8 writer/director Bruce Robinson, pushes all the correct, crowd-pleasing emotional buttons. Chief victim Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lovable Greenpeace activist. Reluctant savior Sheriff (Vince Vaughn) must abandon a ...more