Rating: 
Summary: Very far from disappointing
Review: Michael Caine is one of the very few actors who can give a fine performance even in bad movies, so when the movie is close to perfection you don't get the feeling he's been wasted. The rest of the cast is rather good as well and didn't get me thinking Graham Greene's novel was betrayed (I read the book more than a while ago, so...), since the most important thing in Graham Greene books (I don't think I missed any, and could say the common line for every one I've read) is, as in one title, "The Human Factor", where people' feelings/intentions/personal aims, can warp events of greater dimensions.
For those wondering about the 'Continental' location or other places, they should remember that Vietnam government (unlike most of the population) doesn't always welcome everybodybody in every place, and, what I remember from my own stay at the 'Continental' a few years ago (the 'Metropole' was under repairs) is the hotel management tendency to enforce this; I was not surprised by this change of location.I can even say, after being there, that "whatever your dream, you'll find it here" was true until half a century ago, when Indochine was my dreamland. But now, you'll only find what they'll want you to, and it will cost you dearly, just ask investors conned out of what they've been led to believe as investment money.
Rating: 
Summary: Realisms of the times
Review: "The Quiet American" accurately desplicts the harsh realisms of 1950's Vietnam. Reporting the news proves harsher. Michael Caine expresses these emotional times in one of his finest roles in his long career, as Thomas Fowler. Though Fowler is married, the love scenes with his Vietmanese mistress are beautiful. As he stands in the middle of the political war, he slowly learns that no one can be trusted. His friendship with Alden Pyle, played by Brendan Fraser, proves this the most true. As the plot builds, the audience's eyes become closer to the movie. The ending will leave everyone breathless.
Rating:
Summary: Caine shines in superb adaptation of Graham Greene novel
Review: "The Quiet American" is one of the most beautifully rendered movies ever made from a Graham Greene novel. [The best remains 1949's "The Third Man".] It is immeasurably enhanced by Michael Caine's remarkable acting. The actor, famous for powerful performances, outdoes himself here. It is as though all his triumphs over the last four decades were simply leading up to this one role. Caine is Thomas Fowler, a British journalist covering the war between French colonist rulers and Vietnam Communist rebels in 1952. His lover is a much young Vietnamese girl named Phuong [Da Hai Yen]. Enter Aiden Pyle [Brendan Fraser], a young, idealistic American who thinks he has all the right answers for solving the Vietnam 'problem'. [Although Greene wrote the book in 1955, years before America got heavily involved in the Vietnam conflict, he is remarkably accurate about how this country would eventually act in the situation.] Pyle sees Phuong, and it is love at first sight. He vows not to become involved with her as long as she is with Fowler, but, of course, this vow can not hold up. Eventually, Pyle's decision to pursue Phuong leads to dire consequences for everyone involved. Australian director Philip Noyce is best known for his high profile, big budget movies such as "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger". His legacy will rest with such 'small' movies as this one. "Dead Calm" and "Rabbit Proof Fence". The theme is the moral ambiguity of both love and war, and the movie, though it strays somewhat from the novel's plot, remains faithful to Greene's point of view. One suspects that he novelist would have approved of the film. "The Quiet American" is filmmaking at its best. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Some Times You Have to Take a Side Just to be Human
Review: Most films that deal with Vietnam show the miltary aspect of fighting men in conflict. A very few try to show the war from the inside out, what it means to retain one's inner sense of humanity even if the rest of us are losing ours. In THE QUIET AMERICAN, director Phillip Noyce portrays the Vietnam of 1952 that differed only from the next decade's American-Vietnamese conflict of virtues in that here the focus is on the French-Vietnamese version, which, as we soon see, is no difference at all. In the sweltering Saigon that suffers from daily terrorist bombs, British journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) is trying to juggle numerous personal and professional balls but keeps dropping them. He is married to a London-based wife who refuses to divorce him, forcing him to lie in order to keep his twenty-something Vietnamese mistress Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), who loves him but has to think about her future. Fowler's boss in London threatens to recall him unless he comes up with a blockbuster news story. Into this cauldron comes a medical exporting executive Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who is not what he seems to be, either morally or politically. Pyle falls in love with Phuong, who has to choose between an older man who can offer no security and a younger one who can. While all this personal angst is going on, the Vietnam around them is collapsing and is being ripped apart by the French who are exiting and the Americans who are entering. Complicating matters is that a local Vietnamese warlord is trying to establish his personal fiefdom, using illegal supplies from America. In such a climate,no one and nothing is what it seems. Over the years Michael Caine has had many fine roles, but in his portrayal of the aging but wise journalist, he surely has one of his best. Caine's Fowler has seen politics and politicians up close, and he knows that for him to do his job, he has to maintain a professional distance. His problem is that the better he does his job the less human he becomes. His aide, a Vietnamese subtly underplayed by Tzi Ma, reminds him of this in one scene, and the audience in another. Brendon Fraser as Pyle is not the nutty or action star of his recent movies. Here is an older, more jowly, and definitely the establishment type that in earlier roles he either caricatured or ridiculed. Fraser's Pyle has his own agenda which is not limited to stealing another man's mistress. THE QUIET AMERICAN is one of the best movies of the year because it shows how individuals caught up in a constantly changing political environment are forced to retrench so that they can relearn exactly what, at one time, must have made them feel human.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine acting, but the directing?
Review: While this is a good adaptation of the novel several scenes are poorly done. The film was shot in Viet Nam, yet the locations are not correct. In Saigon the Continental is on the wrong side of the square! With the real Continental in the background. For reasons that escape me the Caravel Hotel stands in for the Continental. A major scene from the book is Fowler's drive to Tay Ninh to meet with General The. In the story line a key factor is the need to drive there and back in one day. But the movie moves this from Tay Ninh to northern Viet Nam. Its impossible to drive that far and back in one day in any country. After traveling the long distance to Viet Nam for location filming it escapes my why the producers did not use Tay Ninh or at least a location that looks like Tay Ninh. For me these major errors distracted from an otherwise fine film.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, Personal Look at Vietnam on the Brink of War
Review: It is 1952 in Saigon, Vietnam. Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) is a correspondent for the London Times who "takes no actions" and "offers no opinions" as he reports on the escalating violence between South Vietnam and encroaching Communists from the North. He makes the acquaintance of an American named Aldan Pyle (Brendan Fraser) who is in Vietnam with the US's Economic Aid Mission. After the London Times threatens to recall Fowler to London, his increased efforts to find newsworthy stories take him into the war's hot spots and political intrigues. Meanwhile, Mr. Pyle has fallen in love with Fowler's mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), and tries to lure her away. When bombs go off in the busy streets of Saigon, Fowler is faced with the realization that he may have to take a side in this war that is erupting around him. "The Quiet American" is based on Graham Greene's novel of the same name, which Greene published in 1955 after witnessing the failure of French policy in Indochina. The novel has been adeptly adapted for the screen by Robert Schenkkan and the renowned Christopher Hampton. Thomas Fowler is one of Michael Caine's best roles in recent years. Caine makes Fowler's attachment to his mistress and his fear of losing her to the younger, more available man both touching and palpable. And he makes Fowler sympathetic, sometimes in spite of himself. It's also nice to see Brendan Fraser in a role that is not fluff. "The Quiet American" offers an intriguing and personal look at the conflict that later became the Vietnam War. It' s one of the best films of 2002.
Rating:
Summary: A fine transcription of Graham Greene's prescient novel
Review: THE QUIET AMERICAN is an example of how excellent film making can translate a novel to the screen without diminishing the impact of the original. Though many consider THE QUIET AMERICAN as more of a memoir than a novel (Graham Greene lived in Saigon in the early 1950's and had first hand information on the trying situation of the French/Communist/Vietnamese patriot poitics and military struggles for power), yet Greene develops his characters with his usual acuity, creating a story with more than mere political drivers. The main character, Thomas Fowler (one of Michael Caine's finest moments on film) is a British journalist/opium-smoking man of the woodwork whose life is given meaning only by his Vietnamese lover (subtly underplayed by Do Thi Hai Yen). His life is given a wakeup call with the arrival of a quiet, unassuming, gentle American (Brendan Fraser, again a fine perfomance)who falls in love with Fowler's lover, and slowly is unmasked as being less than 'quiet' when his connection to the American CIA becomes evident. The theme is discovering what is important, significant and meaningful in a world on the brink and to say more would diminish the impact of this finely wrought movie. Beautifully photographed and scored, the film remains small in its poignancy and never gives in to the seduction of becoming yet another big war movie. The cast is unifromly outstanding: Tzi Ma as Hinh, Fowler's office assistant and confidant, and all the other actors stay credible and multifacted, never becoming stereotypes. A thinking person's film, THE QUIET AMERICAN has much to teach us about how the whole Vietnam debacle began. Bravo to the director!
Rating:
Summary: a beautifully done movie with good script & actings
Review: don't want to spoil your viewing pleasure by writing a detailed report. just buy or rent it. it's a good and serious film that would satisfy you. caine did a good job, the vietmese actor is also a quiet beauty, very oriental, very subtle, very helpless. a puppet and a doll who would be endlessly manipulated by men who love her.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, interesting and very seductive! A great movie!
Review: JUST BUY OR RENT THE MOVIE AND STOP READING REVIEWS!
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Summary: A Thoughtful Excursion Into The Quagmire Of Vietnam!
Review: It looks like Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say. For those of us who slogged through the experience of Vietnam in the sixties, this superbly scripted, filmed, and produced latest version of the wonderfully ironic Graham Greene best-selling novel (an earlier black and white version made in the early 1960s starred Audie Murphy, who turned in a surprisingly professional performance) is a journey back into the heart of darkness, and a thoughtful re-examination of the surprisingly persistent contradiction that American foreign policy poses to the rest of the watching world. In terms that now have obvious parallels to our escalating involvement in Iraq, it openly questions the whole idea of the new American imperialism and how the rest of the civilized world sees it. What is even more gratifying about this film is that it gives Michael Caine yet another opportunity to flaunt his powerful acting abilities as the world weary but still committed British journalist, a man who comes to recognize both the fatal naivety and yet dangerously provocative impulses of a young and idealistic American Alden Pyle (played well by Brendan Fraser). This movie has an eerily prescient feel to it, given the fact that it was filmed and ready for distribution before 9/11, and consequently delayed for release until 2002, when the fervor of patriotic fervor over the approaching hostilities in Iraq blunted the moral sensibilities of many movie goers. In a script that is fairly faithful to the original Greene novel, one finds all of the superficial wide-eyed innocence and naivety the author found so dangerously paired with such a bland willingness toward provocative aggressive action. With unnerving calm and deliberation, Pyle sets into motion actions with calamitous consequences with a seeming child-like belief in his own ill-founded idealism and what he perceives to be the greater good that will necessarily flow from them. Needless to say, his confidence is both ill founded and wildly mistaken in its arrogant assumptions. In this sense, Pyle is the perfect allegorical representation for the dangerously irresponsible conduct of the country on whose behalf he acts. But the real show is Caine's, whose cynical, cautious and well-constructed life suddenly crashes into overdrive, leaving him no choice but to involve himself in the dangerously escalating political situation in an attempt to fend off Pyle's efforts to cuckold him with is gorgeous young Vietnamese mistress and expose Pyle's extralegal efforts to engineer a political coup. This is a marvelously sophisticated and yet eminently entertaining film that both accurately depicts a series of fact-based events important in the history of America's involvement in Vietnam and yet also raises interesting philosophical questions by offering us a detailed character study of an individual at the very margins of his endurance, forced to fight for everything his life means to him. Enjoy! \
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