Movie Review:

The Quiet American

    It is well-known that the United States entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to halt the spread of communism in Indochina.  What is not as well-known - or what The Quiet American is counting on not to be well-known - is the United States' level of involvement in the region prior to the outbreak of war.

    The Quiet American opens in 1952, a couple years before Dien Bien Phu and the end of the French occupation.  Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) is a Vietnam correspondent for the London Times who has sent three stories home in a year and is in danger of being recalled.   Because he has a Vietnamese mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), Fowler is reluctant to go back and promises his employer that he is working on a big story, confiding to his assistant Hinh (Tzi Ma) that he doesn't have one yet.

    Enter Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), a young American who tells Fowler he is there as part of the aid mission.  Pyle quickly makes friends with Fowler, but their friendship is harmed when Pyle meets Phuong and falls in love with her at first sight.  Convinced that he can offer Phuong a better life than Fowler can, and egged on by Phuong's sister, who dislikes her sister's relationship with Fowler, Pyle attempts to convince Phuong and Fowler to see things his way.

    Meanwhile, a parallel plot is running.  Fowler decides he needs a big story, and uses Hinh's contacts to get to Phat Diem in the north.  When he gets there, he finds a massacre that he does not believe is the communists but which the French insist is not them.  Soon he discovers that Pyle and other Americans are associating with the shadowy General Thé, whose followers are emerging as the "third force" in the conflict between the French and the communists.  Fowler tracks the story further and discovers that Pyle is a "quiet American" who knows much more than he seems.

    One of the most interesting things about The Quiet American is how skillfully director Phillip Noyce (who was busy this year, also directing Rabbit-Proof Fence) makes the story intriguing.  This isn't an easy task because the movie's plot is not especially complicated or hard to figure out.  Anyone who saw the trailer knows Pyle isn't the naïf he's initially made out to be, and after that there are only a handful of puzzle pieces that need to show up for the entire plot to be assembled.

    Noyce works around this obvious shortcoming, however, by imbuing the film with a certain style.  It's hard to characterize, exactly, but most of the locations are either dark or very bright and yet simultaneously gloomy.  Everything has an eerie, almost surreal feel to it, clearly suggesting that something is quite amiss without having to hammer you over the head with it.  It's a great example of the way a subtle atmospheric choice by a director can help define a whole film.

    Another way Noyce distracts from the straightforwardness of the political plot is the romantic plot, which rumbles along with an awkwardness that feels so genuine I was squirming in my seat.   We're not quite sure if Pyle has some ulterior motive - he seems to; the character's manners are so curiously neat that he always seems to be up to something - or if he's generally interested in Phuong's eventual well-being, but Pyle's machinations in this subplot are a microcosm of the film's politics - America doesn't care what Vietnam wants; it knows what's best for Vietnam, and by God it's gonna give it to her.

    The film is also buoyed by its lead performances.  Caine received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his role as Fowler, a man upset at having his tranquil existence disturbed by a rival for his lover's affections and the notion of doing actual reportage, not to mention having to take sides at some point.  Still able to carry a film, Caine's expressiveness causes him to melt into the role with a subtle touch that mirrors Noyce's understated direction.   Surprisingly good is Fraser as Pyle - while he sometimes seems shaky, it seems more like this is the character behaving oddly as opposed to bad acting on Fraser's part.   His performance in the rest of the movie, a remarkably balanced mix of amiable and sinister, is good enough to back that theory up.

    The Quiet American is something of a controversial film coming out when it is; as the country readies for a possible war in the Middle East, the film channels the message that maybe America intervenes too much in foreign affairs that don't really concern it, all the while fighting for an ideology that, regardless of whether or not it is right, should not necessarily be forced on other countries.  Rather than being peacekeeper, the United States plays warmonger, so afraid of certain ideologies that it sends troops halfway around the globe to combat popular sentiment.  Is this a correct analysis of America?   Maybe, maybe not.  Certainly it would depend on who you ask.  The point is whose side The Quiet American is pushing for - and it succeeds in promoting its side well.

    Very watchable, with two strong performances, The Quiet American is not an all-time classic, but it is on the short list of the best films of 2002.  A

The Quiet American is a Miramax release.  Rated for images of violence and some language.