Sandra Chase: une innocente en prison

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.'

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 not from Ecuador, so cannot speak about its history, country or people, but I can tell you about this film and (US) films and programmes in general. If you want to a story and to get a feel of what happened to the Chase family, then it's worth the watch. This is a dramatisation of a story that actually happened, it will not be completely accurate if you want accuracy, but you get a good sense of what happened.

Sandra Chase was in a prison and if you know anything about prisons, most prisons are not pleasant places to be in no MATTER what country they are in. All prisons have their own rules. The warden and guards rules and then the prisoners' rules. I don't think she was in a minimum security prison either. She was not in the West as well and it was in the 1990s, where South American countries were seriously trying to reform the judicial system. So prisons were probably no bed of roses. Prisons are not supposed to be holiday camps after all.

I wrote a whole long list of programmes and films to explain this going back to Birth of a Nation (1915) to World Trade Center (2006) as examples of how film makers manipulated things and many films in between (this information was removed as it may have contained spoilers and makes this review even longer); but basically stories can be added to or characters added for dramatic effect and even changed; even though historians, focus groups, action groups, individuals and more object to the unrealistic portrayals. This has always been done and always will be done most likely, by American TV & film makers as well as others. As for things like the prison scenes, they were tame in my opinion from most other film and TV shows.

So, back to the story, here is where a previous poster did no one any favours by not watching the film till the end. Some of it addressing what was said in another review. At the end of the film are two important pieces of information including a history changing one which is probably why this film was made in the first place! One shows you exactly what the film has done with one of the actors (and the real people), if you look out for it, dramatic licence used in this case and another about an important fact. But the film makers are not there to tell the finer details, they are there to tell a story! If you want a true pure film and story, you best never watch a film or TV series again (as they will all have things added or taken away), unless it's a history programme, documentary or the news. This film told a story and you get to see it. It's a drama after all and if nothing else, it should teach everyone, to really know who they are travelling with and always keep an eye on your luggage!

I suggest you watch the film for yourself and, to the end, and then make up your own mind!

This movie depicts the true 1997 story of the anti-American injustices and backwards legal system experienced by 53 yr old "Anti-Drug" Sandra Chase (played by Barbara Hershey), who was held without trial or due process for nearly two years even while terminally ill in an Equadoran Prison (in Quito). Although claiming complete innocence, In real life, Sandra Chase (one of many) experienced beatings by other inmates, deplorable inhuman stench conditions, where prisoners are forced to defecate in the hallways (no toilets in overcrowded small cemented cells), where prison guards who take bribes and payoffs repeatedly brutally rape, beat and mentally abuse American prisoners. To make matters worse, Sandra Chase was denied medical treatment for her scelroderma, a fatal rare disease that attacks the skin and organs and was eventually thrown into a dungeon like atmosphere without food or clean water for 5 days, and when fed, barely surviving on chicken parts and vegetables (not depicted in the movie). "My bible was the only thing they didn't steal," Chase said, "That's the only thing that kept me going".

There are scores of other Americans being held in Ecuadoran prisons. Since Rep. Brown's intervention, over 800 prisoners have been released and more than 2,000 are slated to be set free. Still, the backlog of cases creates a system where the innocent are punished more harshly than the guilty and families are incarcerated for a crime of one member. A Typical Situation, Rep. Brown said the Chase case is typical of many of the estimated 58 Americans being kept in deplorable conditions in Ecuadorian prisons.

After watching the movie, I became outraged that so much bias and anti-American prejudice actually exists in such barbaric conditions by the Equadoran unjust and backwards legal system, not to mention, the high degree of danger of possible false arrest during your stay, for anything that would warrant an excuse to throw innocent U.S. victims into hellish prison conditions. Even if guilty, the punishment of such inhuman conditions hardly fits the crime, where you will be instantly treated as guilty before having any chance of proved innocent. To make matters worse, never knowing how many years before you even get a trial (with the possibilities of ending up with one of their non English, Spanish speaking lawyers}, You'll never know!

Question I'm asking myself is, How many Americans or non So. American citizens have died in this countries stench overcrowded prisons?

I gave this movie 10 out of 10 for it's descriptive warning like effect as a "Wake Up Call" for those who may have otherwise felt safe traveling abroad in drug trafficking 3rd world countries. No spoilers for the movie were used, other than my brief explanation of the true events. Point being, before traveling anywhere outside the U.S., It would be very wise to educate yourselves before leaving U.S. American soil and know what you are truly up against. Why take chances!