Return to Paradise

National Review, Sept 28, 1998 by John Simon

UNDER the curious label Propaganda Films comes Return to Paradise, which sounds like something with sarongs and sex in straw huts, but is a much better movie than it sounds. Actually, it does rather begin that way. Three young Americans are enjoying the interval between college and real life with blissful far niente in Malaysia, where they go native, smoke hash, and make love to luscious village maidens. They do resist some of the suspect drugs being peddled by particularly obnoxious pushers, but otherwise indulge in all the pleasures of the beaches and mountains near Penang.

Two of them, Sheriff and Tony, decide to go home, but Lewis chooses to stay on and help with relocating orangutans in the wild. Sheriff dumps his spare hash in the trash can before taking off with Tony. We next see these two in New York, where Tony has an office job and the laid-back Sheriff is a limo driver. Two years have passed, and suddenly there pops up in Sheriff's limousine a beautiful young lawyer, Beth, who informs him that because of his excess hash, Lewis was arrested as a putative drug dealer, has been in jail all this time, and will hang in eight days unless Tony and Sheriff go back to be tried with him. If both return, it will be three years of jail for each of the three; if only one, six years for him and for Lewis. Beth is Lewis's lawyer and will try anything to get the two friends back to unparadisiac Penang.

Now, I know nothing about international law, but I question much of this. Why did no one get in touch with Sheriff and Tony sooner? Where are Washington and our embassy in all this? And how does one know these exact Penang penalties before the trial, which comes after two years' detention, with execution, apparently, immediately after the verdict? And who are Lewis's family and this enchanting lawyer out of left field, so late in the game? The film offers feeble explanations for all of this, and I don't buy any of them.

What I do buy, however, is the dialogue, the breathless excitement, and the acting. Beth works persuasively on Tony's conscience: Tony will even go it alone, though his smart girlfriend has researched Malaysian prisons to highly disturbing effect. Indeed, we see Lewis in a wretched cell, pitifully curled up under a thin blanket, dehumanized and uncontrollably shaking. But Sheriff is unwilling to go back, though quite willing to let Beth try to change his mind as the days go ominously by.

I suppose you have guessed that there will be a romance between Sheriff and Beth, and a torrid one it is, melting his resistance. Matters are complicated by a black female journalist who has got wind of Lewis's plight and wants to publish the story. Beth warns her that this will infuriate the Malaysians and make things worse for everyone. The women strike an unlikely bargain, and here, too, much remains unclear and unconvincing.

But, again, the film, as written by Wesley Strick and Bruce Robinson, directed by Joseph Ruben, and shot by Reynaldo Villalobos, sweeps you along past logical objections, however justified. There are characters you can feel with and root for, and their likableness and predicament are steadily compelling. It is only when some other key ingredient is deficient that reason can undermine fiction. As things are here, even the periwigs in the trial scene, which clearly bespeak Singapore rather than Penang, make little difference.

Vince Vaughn as Sheriff is an appealing young leading man, and a little facial chubbiness makes him even more sympathetic. His acting style is wonderfully easygoing, which makes him yet more impressive when he rises to moments of high drama. Joaquin Phoenix makes a virtue of his ordinariness -- backed up, to be sure, by solid acting -- and turns Lewis into an utterly believable unheroic Everyman. The lesser parts are decently handled, and then there is Anne Heche, sensational as Beth.

I have not had strong feelings about the actress one way or the other, and her spectacular emergence from the closet did not change anything. Yet here she is giving one of the finest female performances in recent cinematic history, both as a passionate advocate and as a passionate lover. There is great natural dignity matched by supreme intelligence, not easy to convey but here perfectly embodied, along with a slightly vulpine intensity that teases at low and irradiates at high. Her scenes with Vince Vaughn are an amazing progression from cat and mouse to man and woman enchantingly interacting.