The Quiet American

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Story
Review: Simply want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It sucks you into the story and you are left having to take sides at the end. 'What would you have done?' is the question that you would be asking yourself. It's not possilbe to stay neutral, particularly in war. Brilliant movie!

Rating:
Summary: Cynical love story set in a highly explosive environment...
Review: The Quiet American begins with the murder of Dr. Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) as he is stabbed and thrown into the Saigon river. During the 1950s when the French were protecting their colonial Vietnam, Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), a British reporter meets the young quiet American, Dr. Pyle, in Saigon. Dr. Pyle is an idealist that believes that he can help cure the Vietnamese of glaucoma when he meets Phuong (Hai Yen), Mr. Fowler's mistress. Dr. Pyle falls in love at first sight, and seeks Mr. Fowlers approval of his pursuit for Phuong. In the middle of this love triangle the communists are stepping up their attacks against the French colonial empire and the French also lose control of one of their officers as he is rising his own army for the Vietnamese people. These fractions all seem to merge with Mr. Fowler, Dr. Pyle, and Phuong. The Quiet American is a cynical love story set in a highly explosive environment where the setting is affecting the characters choices as well as their actions. The brilliant cast supports the intricate story that is enhanced by Noyce's directorial touch as it takes form on the screen, which in the end offers a terrific cinematic experience.

Rating:
Summary: Graham Greene reporting from Saigon
Review: "The Quiet American" by Phillip Noyce is one of the best films I saw in a long time. Michael Caine is wonderful to watch as he plots his revenge scheme while uncovering the CIA agent's plot, yet Brandon Fraser's performance as the 'Quiet American' is also very believable, as is his romantic interest in the girl. Ultimately, beyond the performances, I admit my interest and appreciation of the film stem from the actuality and relevance of the story to current events, it really makes one think about the manipulation of events that are then used as the excuse to start wars. The film is based on a novel by Graham Greene, who got the idea for the novel upon returning from a trip to Indochina in October 1951. The famous writer spent various months in different periods in Indochina as a correspondent for "Life" Magazine. He, therefore, was able to observe the emerging conflict up close. As a writer, Greene was always able to reconcile fiction within the context of reality. The film by Noyce closely reflects the original spirit of the novel. Indeed, a previous adaptation of Greene's novel in film by J. Mankiewicz in 1958 was to close in time and space to the events discussed in the novel and Greene was not pleased with the result. He might well have been pleased with this version

Rating:
Summary: Does not really sell itself at all.
Review: First of all do not watch the trailer. The entire film is in the trailer and this killed the movie for me. Next up was the hack, contrived and totally unconvincing love story here. That only served its fate on a cold dish for me. This film should have been a hell of a lot better than what it actually was.

Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) plays a journalist in Vietnam who is having an affair with a young Vietnamese lady. He wants a divorce. His wife back in London will not give him one. Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) turns up on the scene as an American who turns out to be something more political. A few mediocre plot devices follow with a little twist in the end that might give that Asian actor some status but that is all.

This is Fraser's worse performance to date by a long shot. He is totally miscast in this. Basically he falls for Fowler's love and all sorts of problems come up - but heck if it is just done so unbelievably. Caine is wrong here. Caine is not the kind of man to sit back and let all this happen to him. Sorry but Caine would kick ass and here he just looses himself in sorrow and regret. It just doesn't work and did not do it for me. I think the characters are miscast here. I could not take Caine or Fraser credibly in this film.

The story also lacks content and although the structure of geo-politics and war in the background is not a bad a move at all it just fails to really deliver on its promises. I watched this with another person who likes these types of movies and we both thought it was dreadful and not time well spent at all. I love movies but this one is just a right bore with lots of high production values but ultimately bad casting, direction and a bit of a fanciful script. I can not for the life of me understand why people where tooting Oscar status here.

It is ultimately a bore. Maybe those who do not watch the trailer will appreciate it more.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good for Hollywood
Review: Being a fan of Graham Greene makes it hard to not look forward to this film. Yet for all its splendid imagery and evocation of nostalgia, they could have done with more attention to detail. The book always made me wonder at Pyle, who seemed pretty dense for what Greene must have intended -- a clever, politically sophisticated guy in the naive service of his country. The Pyle of this book seems a little more "clever," and maybe his "I can give you a better deal than this English bloke" is someone's style of courtship. That being said, I marveled at the quality of the photography and flavor of the film. Small details trip the direction up, such as the mis-location of the Continental on the wrong side of the Opera House, and the headline about the "cease-fire at Dien Bien Phu" ending the war. A cease-fire would have been a blessing to the French, rather than the crushing defeat of the garrison on May 7, 1954. Certainly Greene could have told them this, were he alive to advise them -- he visited Dien Bien Phu earlier that same year. And General The was a real political figure (he was later killed fighting the Binh Xuyen in Saigon in 1955), but the Pyle's "Third Force" had to be larger than The's regiment of Cao Dai troops (somehow, the 2003 version of the film never mentions the Cao Dai, but rather implies that it is CIA funded). The French had indeed provided funds to Cao Dai and Hoa Hao armies (not to mention the Binh Xuyen crime syndicate, which the French used to suppress the Viet Minh in Saigon-Cholon)in the south, but this ended when the US took over control in the south and the French pulled out. Premier Ngo Dinh Diem had litle use for the sect armies, though The's regiment was absorbed into the Vietnamese National Army. Well, the intricacies of Vietnamese politics do make a story difficult to tell simply, and this is especially true of a film. I rather liked the old version, with Audie Murphy, who really did better at playing Pyle. Michael Caine did well with a stumbling script, which was nonetheless pretty true to Greene's novel. He is now something of a celebrity there -- I recently saw a framed still of Caine in a scene from the film, hung in the foyer just outside the Caravelle Hotel's Saigon-Saigon Bar. Talk about deja-deja-vu.

Rating:
Summary: Better than I was expecting
Review: Set against the backdrop of the French involvement in Vietnam in the 50's, this film is really about the unlikely friendship between two westerners, whose relationship weathers several trials and tribulations, including a romantic rivalry and a death-defying escape from the Viet Minh. At this point in the war, there are few Americans and Britishers in Vietnam, and Caine and Fraser at least both speak English. Caine is great as the indifferent and world-weary foreign correspondant, whose only passion, it seems, is for the girl. Fraser, who might at first blush appear a poor choice for the role, is actually quite good as the U.S. medical mission member who is supposedly there to help with the treatment of trachoma, a common cause of blindness in third-world countries, and easily treatable. But there is more to Fraser's character than meets the eye, as Caine finds out, who suspects Fraser is part of a CIA plot to supply diolacton, which can be used to make plastic explosives, to a Vietnamese general who the U.S. hopes will eventually take over south Vietnam. Despite his initial aloofness from the conflict, Caine is eventually forced to take sides, which leads to the climax of the film, which I won't spoil for you here. I thought the film captured the pre-U.S. ambience of Saigon quite well, with its French restaurants, sidewalk cafes, opium dens and parlors, and bordellos. Overall a fine film and better than I was expecting.

Rating:
Summary: A political essence
Review: In Brief

It's the autumn of 1952, and American Aid Worker Alden Pyle (Fraser) arrives in Saigon. A period of conflict, prior to the American invasion, the region sees the Vietnamese fight for independence from French colonial rule. Befriending Thomas Fowler (Caine) a London Times correspondent, Pyle soon finds himself in love with Fowler's mistress (Hai Yen). The confusion and conflict of this tempestuous love triangle is nothing compared to the murder, betrayal, and hidden truth that underlies the social upheaval in the country and that appears to be closer to these isolated three than is initially apparent.

Review

Premiering a few weeks ago as part of the Regus London Film Festival, there is something very bitter about this film. We are told in the opening scenes that the smell of Saigon promises everything in exchange for your soul, and essentially the movie comes down to analysing the concept of humanity: Do humans really posses it? Yet much like the triangle that binds the relationships of the three central characters, the simple answer appears to be that one always wants what the other can't have. It is the subterfuge that makes the film compelling as we journey with Fowler in his discovery of the truth about the involvement of America in the actions of independent 'freedom fighters.' Yet once again his motives aren't as sacrificial as they appear, for he doesn't want to loose his position and his mistress so must urgently find a big story in order to justify remaining.

This is the second film version of Graham Greene's 1952 novel, and the political intentions of the original seem to have been subverted in the light of recent events. There appears to be an attempt to question the morality of the western superpowers today through comparisons to the past. In a summation at the end we are told of the lives lost in the Vietnam war and when American involvement moved from the shadows to the foreground eventually 495,000 American troops died in conflict. While this is undoubtedly poignant, it is the films undoing and ultimate weakness. Rather than engage the text where it works as a film of three lives and two stories that cross over and become entangled, there are attempts to parallel today either directly as mentioned before or unfortunately indirectly through the viewers own mind due to the timing of its release. Indeed, many believe that this is the cause of its scaled down opening in the States.

However uneasily this film sits, it is beautifully shot by Chris Doyle, the genius behind many of the ionic Wong Kar Wai films, and the performances of the cast are solid throughout. Caine giving what has to be his best since Alfie, as he combines the world worn weary journalist with someone that refuses to see the horror until he has to relent to reality. While understatedly - the man in the white suite - Fraser, supports Caine with a solidly ironic portrayal of American perfection: Indeed the image of Pyle (Fraser) surrounded by the devastation of a local bomb blast, ignoring the dying to wipe the blood of stranger with a hanky from his white trouser leg will stay with me for sometime and is a perfect way of summing the essence of this movie up.

The Verdict

Fowler is told in the film that one has to take sides in order to remain human, and it is this pull of the puppet strings that affect both character & audience creating a paradox of engagement and disgust. Political in its intentions, it blatantly desires to manipulate an audience rather than raise the stakes and focus on its source material, allowing one to make their own questions, impressions, and conclusions. However, that aside Caine is truly excellent in this and from that stand point alone it should be seen, but as the movie makers are insistent on reminding us: beware the Quiet American.

Rating:
Summary: Talk about premonition...
Review: This is THE story about the beginnings of America's involvement in the mess that became the Vietnam War. Graham Greene had future vision and even in 1955 knew what would happen. He both explains and predicts the future in The Quiet American, a beautiful film with Michael Caine playing Fowler, a Brit journalist in 50s in Vietnam. Fowler's beautiful but opportunistic Vietnamese mistress, Phuong (who is herself a metaphor for the country itself), is coveted and for a while, claimed by a seemingly innocuous American named Pyle. Slowly, Pyle's real purpose in the country is discovered, and Fowler's servant upsets his determinedly neutral, uninvolved stance by saying, "There comes a time when you must choose sides."
Absolutely wonderful, profoundly thought-provoking, multi-layered film.

Rating:
Summary: enjoyable historical allegory...
Review: By itself, this is a respectable love-triangle drama set in an exotic land, more than enough to hold our attention for 2 hours.

However, viewed in the context of 20th century history, it becomes a good bit more intriguing and even disturbing in the questions it leaves unanswered.

A great many Americans like to think of their country's involvement in the Vietnam conflict as a prime example of good intentions paving the way to hell. Not many of us have like to consider that perhaps less nobler motives were also at work: not hegemonic neo-colonialism as an outgrowth of anti-Communist paranoia, but rather anti-Communist paranoia as an excuse and cover for hegemonic neo-colonialism.

So in the same way, the film leaves open the question whether the CIA agent which the title describes is really acting upon misguided good intentions and had no idea that the South Vietnamese thugs he was smuggling military aid to were corrupt terrorists and wannabe tyrants, or whether he had a completely Machiavellian attitude about building a case for American intervention by any means necessary.

Thus the title itself is arresting: The *Quiet* American. Is he "quiet" out of earnestness and purity, or is the "quietness" a necessary cover for some very sinister motives?

This is a film deserving of a second or maybe even a third viewing, and lots of discussion about the characters against the political history of Vietnam in the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: Vietnamese love and political triangle
Review: Michael Caine skillfully portrays Thomas Fowler, an aging British journalist based in Saigon during the French-Indochina conflict in 1952. Caine and his alluring concubine, the bewitching Do Thi Hai Yen are introduced to American medical technician, Brendan Fraser. The three soon become immersed in a love triangle with the conflicting forces vying for control of Vietnam as a backdrop.

Caine abhorent of French colonialism is at ideological odds with Fraser who is fervently anti-Communist and is secretly working with factions within the country.

The character conflicts ultimately reach a fever pitch, paralleling the strife and turmoil within the country itself. Interestingly the seminal stages of U.S. involvement in the seemingly endless warfare in Southeast Asia is chronicled as the initial pathway to the Vietnam war.