Sandra Chase: une innocente en prison

It's another in the "Americans are never guilty" parade of films. The notion that US citizens are always duped victims in drug smuggling cases is naive at best. While they may not deliberately smuggle drugs in all cases, having worked in travel for many years I can declare that US citizens can be extremely gullible when abroad and equally gullible that "I'm a US citizen" immunizes them from local laws. This is a quite nicely predictable "US citizen unjustly imprisoned" film, and all the predictable people are evil and in league against the poor US citizen. That Americans are naive does not mean they are immune to legal consequences. "I was suckered" is too frequently heard abroad to serve as a defense. And being familiar with Ecuadorian government and law, I can say that they are not exactly the rampant fascists portrayed in this film

I am Ecuadorian Citizen and I am very familiar, off course, with how towns look like, as well streets, people, jails, sceneries, laws, etc. The first fake things I watched like towns, music, people, the way people speaks Spanish, the horrendous inner jails world and legal system did move me to a scrutiny attitude; it's like watching a true history happened in the US and filmed in any other country. Americans would notice it immediately. I don't understand why, if the movie is related to a true history happened in Ecuador, why they had to film in a totally different locations? Everything in the "Ecuadorian" environment is Colombian. Perhaps someone could tell me that filming in Ecuador would be very dangerous, but that is not true once more. So it would be very smart and fair that the movie Productors made clear the year that this story happened, because right now at this very moment, Ecuador, a small country but one of the most beautiful in the whole world, is the home of thousands of retired Americans where they live happy. And I don't think they would stay there for 24 hours knowing the "inhumanity chaos" supposedly happening there. It's just to honor the people who suffered this terrible time, Ecuador and us, the spectators.

Why do all the movies & documentaries about white Americans in particular imply that they are innocent victims of barbaric third world countries' drug laws? They are depicted as completely gullible, innocently duped, scammed, coerced, or just trying to make ends meet by doing one innocent drug deal. The stories always go out of their way to make the audience enraged about the inhumane conditions outside the enlightened modern day humane U.S. system. In fact, abuses of this sort and worse happen daily in this country. The mentally ill, underage, and poor are physically, emotionally and psychologically tormented and permanently scarred. Isolation, rapes, beatings, huge financial profits by privatized prisons in this country have created a mass incarceration system that now moves babies with tantrums into the prison system for profit. Young ppl, especially minorities are economic fodder for this human rights disgrace because if you build it, you must fill it. The Pa. judges were putting young ppl, students (and they were white) into jails for truancy, disrespecting teachers by drawing unflattering pictures of them by the students and all sorts of excuses so the judges who had stock in these detention facilities as shareholders could increase their profits. We live in a country that imprisons more ppl than communist China, Russia and N. Korea together. 10s of thousands of ppl per day are arrested. 85% of them are never formally charged or convicted, but this allows overtime and monies to be made by the ruling oligarchy. Tax free padded police pensions in New York, judges' salaries, corp supply companies-food, laundry, etc.-all profit in the 100s of billions from the corrupt mega corp that is the U.S. injustice system.

An aside regarding the authenticity of the story-How did the protagonist keep her gray hair in check all that time? The prison must have allowed Lady Clairol to visit along with the Botox/Juvederm/and plastic surgery touch-ups. Anothe problem with American TV-too much Hollywood.The daughter plays a nun who wears make-up.

I am a divorced white male who can cook very well,like classical music, play the piano fairly well and am not an anti femi-nazi (ala Rush Limbaugh).

This film was engaging, especially since it was based upon a true story. Sandra Chase was the name of the lead character (portrayed by Barbara Hershey) in this film and, also, an X-rated film, 'Insatiable,' starring Marilyn Chambers. I prefer the latter.

Sandra explains to a nun that 'perhaps I am not a good person.' Perhaps she is just a person who cannot stand growing old. She ties up with a much younger, virile looking guy who speaks Spanish and takes off with him to Ecuador, hardly knowing him. The son and daughter think it's 'cool.' I knew a woman just like that, but she was only six months older than me. She wanted a pre-nup because her late husband left her with a $500K insurance policy and she didn't want to share the money with myself or her children, so I left her. Then, as she grew older, she felt lonely and married a much younger man who took her money. 'Vanity' is one of the seven capital sins and will come back to haunt one, although Sandra didn't deserve quite that much grief. Another reviewer, from Ecuador, stresses that the country is not as portrayed in the film. I believe her. No wonder other countries dislike the U.S.

Maybe, Sandra was right when she said '...perhaps I am not a good person.'

This film begins with a middle-aged woman named "Sandra Chase" (Barbara Hershey) being convinced by her adult daughter "Tammi Chase" (Rachael Leigh Cook) to take a vacation to Ecuador with her male companion "Nick Sakeris" (Vincent Irizarry). Having never been overseas, Sandra eventually acquiesces to her boyfriend, and they fly to Ecuador. Unfortunately, as they prepare to board their return flight, two bags of cocaine are found in Sandra's luggage and the two of them are imprisoned pending a trial for drug trafficking. The problem, however, is that the court system is quite slow in Ecuador and as a result Sandra soon finds herself alone in a foreign prison without any idea on whether she will ever be able to resume the life she once knew. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that whenever I see the words "based on a true story" applied to any American movie, I immediately begin to suspect that some key facts have been embellished out-of-proportion to the actual case at hand. It's what Hollywood does. That said, I have always tried to take everything with a grain of salt when watching movies of this sort. But that's just me. Even so, I still found the overall story to be quite riveting, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.