The Quiet American

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source: The Quiet American

The Quiet American is an unassuming little film, compelling some people to think that its boring. It is, in fact, anything but boring. It tells the tale of a woman caught between two men, which in itself is merely a plot contrivance comparing Vietnam to a woman caught between two lovers. In fact, the script has one of the main characters explaining this very fact. The acting is outstanding - Michael Caine is in top-form and Brendan Fraser delivers a career-best performance. The two main leads are so believable that the lines between "good guy" and "bad guy" are blurred. All we're left with are two flawed characters trying to make the best of a bad situation which they find themselves in. They're both such gentlemen that one finds oneself empathising with each character which is extraordinary in an age where movies clearly define the "good guy" and the villain. An outstanding film, one that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Michael Caine gives one of his best performances (not worthy of an Academy Award) but a weak story drags this movie down. The rest of the cast are adequate but cannot save this movie. Would suggest that you wait for the rentals to become available in the rental stores.

Saigon 1952. You can feel the heat and smell the sweat of the dark nights, but you really want to ask for more. This might be theatre, traditional theatre, and it might be dramatized literature, but it's not a film on film's conditions. Michael Caine has got many admirers, but he really is, and always has been, a theatrical actor and his way of making his job is a little old-fashioned perhaps. It is a somewhat slow performance. Brendan Fraser is better. He is not perfect in behaving like an American diplomat of 1952, but has got much more colours, shadows, ups and downs. This is rather much like films still were made in the 60s. It's hard to get really engaged.

This movie flows smoothly. It all seems simple, until well into the movie you realize that the plot is quite involved. The story is typical Greene - a love triangle played out against a political background. This movie makes points that are particularly relevant to our involvement in the current Iraq war. The on-location Viet Nam scenes are totally realistic. So many times in movies scenes on a city street seem staged. You can almost hear the director telling the extras where and how to walk, and the props seem to have just been painted. In this movie you could well believe that you had stepped back to 1950s Viet Nam. Of course Michael Caine's performance is one of his best - completely unforced and natural. I suspect that those who lived through the Viet Nam era in the U.S. will find this movie more involving than those who did not.

Michael Caine's performance as British Journalist Thomas Fowler in 50's Vietnam was glorified by some critics as the elite acting of 2002. He was even nominated for an Academy Award. I do have to admire the way that Caine delicately carried himself throughout the film, but I do have to quite those American critics that thought it was in that certain supremacy level. Brendan Fraser plays the quiet American Alden Pyle who arrives in Vietnam and befriends Fowler. Moreover, he also does `quiet' i mean `quite' a back-stabbing maneuver by falling in love with Fowler's young vietnamese lover Phoung. `The Quiet American' was beautifully photographed and its cinematography is quite an exhibition. However, Director Phillip Noyce did not insert enough arousing noise in `The Quiet American' for me to recommend this irksome film. *** Average

When I first saw this film, two thoughts hit me, all the acting in this film is masterful and the second is that these are the types of thrillers Hollywood should make but fails to try to even find movies such as this a wide studio release and it way to become a hit. Some of the acting in this film is some of the best I have seen in a long while, Michael Caine gives what I think is his best performance since 1971's Get Carter and this along with The Cider House Rules rank among his best work. For his co-stars, Brendan Fraser gives his best performance at this point in his career. The plot itself does play a major part in this film but I could go for a plot less movie if it only had this type of acting, if a normal thriller or even romantic movie had this acting all the time, they could become major hits and critically praised. Not only for it's plot and acting, along with many other great things in this film, you must see "The Quiet American".

This isn't a love story. I thought this movie was about 2 guys competing for the love of the one woman, but it turned out to be something totally different. (SPOILERS BEWARE) Instead, it implies that America was willing to do anything to get support for the war in Vietnam, and in this case, explode bombs in public places to make it look like the Communists did it. This movie was just OK. I guess Brandon Fraser's character, Pyle, really did love Phoung, but I'm still not sure if he just wasn't using it as an excuse to keep seeing Fowler and using him to report stories. But the ending didn't make a lot of sense because it didn't explain who the people were that killed Pyle and why. And why was Fowler involved in setting it up. One thing's for sure, Phoung didn't seem to really care that Pyle was dead. FINAL VERDICT: Not the tightest script. It was OK, but the story gets convulated toward the end.

A movie version of the Graham Greene novel "The Quiet American" seemed oddly out of place in 2002 for some reason. But it's a pretty good adaptation of one of Greene's lesser known works. Michael Caine is wonderful as an older, wearier spy who teams up with a young American in 1950s Vietnam, only to fall into a vicious mire of bitterness and jealousy as he begins to suspect that the American is stealing the heart of his beautiful -- and much younger -- native girlfriend. The film is much more plot driven than the novel, so it's not as rich an experience as reading Greene. But everyone involved, especially Caine, tries hard to get at the themes that make Greene's fiction so rewarding, and they could have done much worse. Grade: A-