Paradise lost
Secular morality play lapses into melodrama
Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix), Sheriff (Vince Vaughn) and their attorney Beth Eastern (Anne Heche) await a courtroom verdict in Return to Paradise.
Return
to Paradise, starring Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche and
Joaquin Phoenix, is directed by Joseph Ruben.
Rated R for violence, profanity and sexual situations.
By
Peter T. Chattaway
ChristianWeek movie critic
Have you ever watched a Christian movie and found yourself bored by its predictability, its calculated dramatic conflicts, and the schematic way in which its characters are drawn in order to communicate an all-too-obvious message?
Throw in some sex and drugs and make the concluding conversion experience a bit more subtle, and you might get a secular morality play like Return to Paradise.
Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix), Tony (David Conrad) and Sheriff (Vince Vaughn) are three Americans who meet while vacationing in Malaysia and spend a few hedonistic weeks together in what one of them calls "a paradise of rum, girls and good cheap hash."
There is the occasional setback, such as a brief, inconsequential encounter with some aphrodisiac-peddling back-alley thugs, but for the most part these guys are so smitten with the country–its beautiful scenery, its available women–that Sheriff remarks, "It’s like God’s own bathtub, or something."
Naturally, they promise to keep in touch once they’ve all said good-bye. And, just as naturally, they don’t. Two years later, Tony is a successful architect with a fiancˇe, while Sheriff drives a limo. One day he picks up a passenger named Beth (Anne Heche) who tells him that she’s a lawyer and that her client–Sheriff and Tony’s holiday buddy Lewis–is in a Malaysian jail awaiting execution for drug-peddling.
Interesting premise
If Sheriff and Tony go back and admit the hash belonged to all three of them, she says, Lewis won’t have to die, but all three will spend a few years in prison. Oh, and one other thing: Sheriff and Tony have only eight days to make this life-changing decision.
The premise is certainly interesting enough, but the script–written by Bruce Robinson (The Killing Fields) and Wesley Strick (The Saint) and based on the French film Force Majeure–boxes its characters into neat little pigeonholes and never really lets them develop. Every choice, every decision, every change of plan that does take place feels like it was imposed on these people just to keep the script from following too straight a line.
The film relies on a few star-driven conventions, too. It focuses on a single individual, Sheriff, and his efforts to come to terms with his conscience, when arguably it ought to divide its time more equally between Sheriff and Tony.
As it is, the audience is conditioned to expect a big change in Sheriff’s life, such that when he does repent–if that’s not too strong a word–of his irresponsibility, it comes as no surprise. By comparison, Tony’s decision doesn’t seem to matter all that much.
Most mystifying
Most mystifying of all, though, is the love story. It’s bad enough director Joseph Ruben felt the need to show Beth in her underwear whenever she answers the phone.
But having her and Sheriff fall in love–especially after Sheriff complains that she’s been trying to bribe him with sex–just moves this film one melodramatic notch further from reality. Once again, a movie has shown that it’s okay for a woman to play a professional or have her name on the marquee, so long as she takes her clothes off in the presence of the leading man.
The film boasts a few other annoyances, notably the stereotypically smarmy reporter (Jada Pinkett Smith) who interferes in the case, but it is not entirely without redeeming value. It does raise the twin questions of how much decadence society can tolerate in the name of freedom, and how much punishment society ought to tolerate in the name of purity.
There is also the excellent performance of Joaquin Phoenix as Lewis. Whether making a humble but desperate videotaped plea for help or rambling on the nature of prayer within a seemingly godless prison, he gives the film a much-needed shot of conviction.
It makes you wonder how good the film might have been if it had had the courage to look beyond its clichˇs.
