A mother pleads for her son's life in Malaysia, a country sensitive about its reputation for hanging Chinese drug-smugglers while reprieving clean-limbed young Anglo-Saxons who are mostly Australian, as in the present (true) story.
Kevin and Geoff are a couple of layabouts with too little to do, partly because both are unattached after Kevin's partner suffers a miscarriage and Geoff has driven off the road while canoodling with his girl at the wheel, killing her, but claiming that she was the driver.
Geoff, the dominant character, drifts into smuggling and recruits the docile Kevin as his sidekick. When Kevin asks "Why me?", Geoff just flashes a sunny smile and says "Why not?" Both are brilliantly cast. Hugo Weaving's Geoff is the smoothie whose charm can suddenly turn to thunder under provocation, which is not long coming, while John Polson's Kevin is highly convincing as a young man out of his depth, insecure and jittery, as the airport police are quick to notice.
About half the story is devoted to Kevin's mother (Julie Christie) trying to save him from the rope, utterly blind to his guilt. This is certainly a tale of our times, full of the scrambled ethics of cross-border justice. Heroin-profiteers - arguably murderers - are suddenly turned into martyr-victims. And all manner of people presume to impose their own stamp on the due process of law, against the sickening background of corruption in the courts and the jails.
Principal of these is the Julie Christie character - or perhaps the actress herself hoping to wangle a free plug for her human-rights agenda. By this time, Christie had generally given up films in favour of political campaigning, notably against the death-penalty. But she disappoints here. To carry conviction as a desperate slum-mum, she of all people would need to camouflage her glamour better than this. And her undeniable acting skills do not extend to accents. Kevin's mother had an English background, but Christie seems to start with a touch of strine, before moving into a vague attempt at Lancashire. Also, there is surprisingly little crusading oratory, just bits and pieces - unless some of it has been edited-out in the version I watched, which was cut from the original four hours to under three. This could also explain the arrival of Sarah Jessica Parker in a role that seemed to me poorly-defined, and Kevin suddenly getting a visit from a shapely hooker, allowed into his cell on the eve of execution, in the style of 18th-century Newgate. This is weak editing, as is the over-use of establishing shots featuring airport signs to signal location. Yet the anti-drug street-posters announcing 'Dadah is Death' are barely referenced.
Kevin and Geoff are a couple of layabouts with too little to do, partly because both are unattached after Kevin's partner suffers a miscarriage and Geoff has driven off the road while canoodling with his girl at the wheel, killing her, but claiming that she was the driver.
Geoff, the dominant character, drifts into smuggling and recruits the docile Kevin as his sidekick. When Kevin asks "Why me?", Geoff just flashes a sunny smile and says "Why not?" Both are brilliantly cast. Hugo Weaving's Geoff is the smoothie whose charm can suddenly turn to thunder under provocation, which is not long coming, while John Polson's Kevin is highly convincing as a young man out of his depth, insecure and jittery, as the airport police are quick to notice.
About half the story is devoted to Kevin's mother (Julie Christie) trying to save him from the rope, utterly blind to his guilt. This is certainly a tale of our times, full of the scrambled ethics of cross-border justice. Heroin-profiteers - arguably murderers - are suddenly turned into martyr-victims. And all manner of people presume to impose their own stamp on the due process of law, against the sickening background of corruption in the courts and the jails.
Principal of these is the Julie Christie character - or perhaps the actress herself hoping to wangle a free plug for her human-rights agenda. By this time, Christie had generally given up films in favour of political campaigning, notably against the death-penalty. But she disappoints here. To carry conviction as a desperate slum-mum, she of all people would need to camouflage her glamour better than this. And her undeniable acting skills do not extend to accents. Kevin's mother had an English background, but Christie seems to start with a touch of strine, before moving into a vague attempt at Lancashire. Also, there is surprisingly little crusading oratory, just bits and pieces - unless some of it has been edited-out in the version I watched, which was cut from the original four hours to under three. This could also explain the arrival of Sarah Jessica Parker in a role that seemed to me poorly-defined, and Kevin suddenly getting a visit from a shapely hooker, allowed into his cell on the eve of execution, in the style of 18th-century Newgate. This is weak editing, as is the over-use of establishing shots featuring airport signs to signal location. Yet the anti-drug street-posters announcing 'Dadah is Death' are barely referenced.