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The Englishman is sad and lonely. He suffers from the indignity of growing too old for romance while not yet free of yearning. He is in love for one last time. He doesn't even fully understand it is love until he is about to lose it. He is a newspaper correspondent in Saigon, and she is a dance-hall girl 30 or 40 years younger. She loves him because he pays her to. This arrangement suits them both. He tells himself he is "helping" her. Well, he is, and she is helping him.

His name is Fowler, and he is played by Michael Caine in a performance that seems to descend perfectly formed. There is no artifice in it, no unneeded energy, no tricks, no effort. It is there. Her name is Phuong ( Do Hai Yen ), and like all beautiful women who reveal little of their true feelings, she makes it possible for him to project his own upon her. He loves her for what he can tell himself about her.

Between them steps Alden Pyle ( Brendan Fraser ), the quiet young American who has come to Vietnam, he believes, to save it. Eventually he also believes he will save Phuong. Young men like old ones find it easy to believe hired love is real, and so believe a girl like Phuong would prefer a young man to an old one, when all youth represents is more work.

Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American (1955) told the story of this triangle against the background of America's adventure in Vietnam in the early 1950s--when, he shows us, the CIA used pleasant, presentable agents like Pyle to pose as "aid workers" while arranging terrorist acts that would justify our intervention there.

The novel inspired a 1958 Hollywood version in which the director Joseph Mankiewicz turned the story on its head, making Fowler the bad guy and Pyle the hero. Did the CIA have a hand in funding that film? Stranger things have happened: The animated version of "Animal Farm" (1948) was paid for by a CIA front, and twisted Orwell's fable about totalitarianism both East and West into a simplistic anti-communist cartoon.

Now comes another version of "The Quiet American," this one directed by the Australian Phillip Noyce and truer to the Greene novel. It is a film with a political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in their fascination with each other and with the girl. A question every viewer will have to answer at the end is whether a final death is the result of moral conviction, or romantic compulsion.

The film is narrated by Caine's character, in that conversational voice weary with wisdom; we are reminded of the tired cynicism of the opening narration in the great film of Greene's The Third Man . Pyle has "a face with no history, no problems," Fowler tells us; his own face is a map of both. "I'm just a reporter," he says. "I offer no point of view, I take no action, I don't get involved." Indeed, he has scarcely filed a story in the past year for his paper, the Times of London; he is too absorbed in Phuong, and opium.

The irony is that Pyle, who he actually likes at first, jars him into action and involvement. What he finally cannot abide is the younger man's cheerful certainty that he is absolutely right: "Saving the country and saving a woman would be the same thing to a man like that." As luck would have it, "The Quiet American" was planned for release in the autumn of 2001. It was shelved after 9/11, when Miramax president Harvey Weinstein decided, no doubt correctly, that the national mood was not ripe for a film pointing out that the United States is guilty of terrorist acts of its own. Caine appealed to Weinstein, who a year later allowed the film to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was so well received by the public and critics that Miramax opened it for Oscar consideration in December. Now it goes into national release, on what appears to be the eve of another dubious war.

It would be unfortunate if people went to the movie, or stayed away, because of its political beliefs. There is no longer much controversy about the CIA's hand in stirring the Vietnam pot, and the movie is not an expose but another of Greene's stories about a worn-down, morally exhausted man clinging to shreds of hope in a world whose cynicism has long since rendered him obsolete. Both men "love" Phuong, but for Pyle she is less crucial. Fowler, on the other hand, admits: "I know I'm not essential to Phuong, but if I were to lose her, for me that would be the beginning of death." What Phuong herself thinks is not the point with either man, since they are both convinced she wants them.

Fraser, who often stars as a walking cartoon (" Dudley Do-Right ," " George of the Jungle ") has shown in other pictures, like " Gods and Monsters ," that he is a gifted actor, and here he finds just the right balance between confidence and blindness: What he does is evil, but he is convinced it is good, and has a simple, sunny view that maddens an old hand like Fowler. The two characters work well together because there is an undercurrent of commonality: They are both floating in the last currents of colonialism, in which life in Saigon can be very good, unless you get killed.

Noyce made two great pictures close together, this one and " Rabbit-Proof Fence ," which I reviewed last December. He feels anger as he tells this story, but he conceals it, because the story as it stands is enough. Some viewers will not even intercept the political message. It was that way with Greene: The politics were in the very weave of the cloth, not worth talking about. Here, in a rare Western feature shot in Vietnam, with real locations and sets that look well-worn enough to be real, with wonderful performances, he suggests a world view more mature and knowing than the simplistic pieties that provide the public face of foreign policy.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Quiet American (2003)

Rated R For Images Of Violence and Some Language

118 minutes

Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler

Brendan Fraser as Alden Pyle

Do Hai Yen as Phuong

Rade Sherbedgia as Inspector Vigot

Tzi Ma as Hinh

Robert Stanton as Joe Tunney

Holmes Osborne as Bill Granger

Quang Hai as General The

Ferdinand Hoang as Mr. Muoi

Directed by

• Phillip Noyce
• Christopher Hampton
• Robert Schenkkan

Based On The Novel by

• Graham Greene

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Summary From the classic novel by Graham Greene comes a murder mystery centered on a love triangle set against the French Indochina War in Vietnam circa 1952. (Miramax)

Directed By : Phillip Noyce

Written By : Graham Greene, Christopher Hampton, Robert Schenkkan

The Quiet American

Where to watch.

Michael Caine

Thomas fowler.

Brendan Fraser

Thi Hai Yen Do

Rade Serbedzija

Inspector vigot.

Robert Stanton

Holmes Osborne

Bill granger, general thé, ferdinand hoang, pham thi mai hoa, phuong's sister, mathias mlekuz, french captain, watch tower soldier, tim bennett, american photographer, jeff truman, dancing american, house of 500 girls' singer, ha phong nguyen, muoi's henchman.

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Graham Greene's Unquiet Novel; On Film and in Print, 'The Quiet American' Still Fascinates

By Martin F. Nolan

• Jan. 30, 2003

On the frontispiece of ''The Quiet American,'' Graham Greene quotes another well-traveled skeptic, Lord Byron: ''This is the patent age of new inventions/ For killing bodies, and for saving souls,/ All propagated with the best intentions.''

In novels, screenplays and short stories, Greene chronicled the end of empire. Scorning those who stood in history's way, he did not spare heroes, patriots or the naïve. ''God save us always from the innocent and the good,'' Fowler, the jaded correspondent who narrates ''The Quiet American,'' says to the French inspector, Vigot. After critics called Greene anti-American, Hollywood distorted ''The Quiet American'' in 1958 with a heroically happy ending. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Miramax postponed the second film version until Sir Michael Caine, who portrays Fowler, became persuasively unquiet. (It opened last November.)

The book endures, having served as a journalistic guidebook, a prophecy and even a tourist icon. Banned in Vietnam in the 1950's, ''The Quiet American '' is now sold at kiosks in Ho Chi Minh City as a symbol of local color, like ''Moby Dick'' on Nantucket or ''Cannery Row'' in Monterey. The book heavily influenced correspondents who covered the American war in the 1960's. ''Many passages some of us can quote to this day,'' said David Halberstam, who received a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting while a correspondent for The New York Times in 1964. ''It was our bible.''

Fowler, following a besieged French patrol, outlines a modus operandi for intrepid reporters: ''No journalists were allowed, no cables could be sent, for the papers must carry only victories. The authorities would have stopped me in Hanoi if they had known of my purpose, but the farther you get from headquarters, the looser becomes the control, until, when you come within range of the enemy's fire, you are a welcome guest.''

By the 1960's, the book had become ''the equivalent of what Napoleon suggested: a marshal's baton in every corporal's knapsack,'' recalls David Greenway, who covered the Vietnam War for Time and The Washington Post. ''Every reporter had one. Many carried 'The Quiet American' and 'Scoop' by Evelyn Waugh.''

The British press bracketed Greene and Waugh as ''Catholic novelists'' because both wrote morality-play novels, but while Waugh celebrated military exploits, Greene, who served in British intelligence during World War II, did not. In 1956, American critics failed to salute ''The Quiet American'' when it was published in the United States.

''His caricatures of American types are often as crude and trite as those of Jean-Paul Sartre,'' wrote Robert Gorham Davis in The New York Times. In The New Yorker, A. J. Liebling called the book a ''nasty little plastic bomb.''

In 1952, the year Greene writes about, some 300 Americans were in Vietnam. Fowler mocks policies that would later send hundreds of thousands of G.I.'s into the jungles and protesters onto American streets. ''If Indochina goes ----'' argues the American, an undercover government agent named Alden Pyle.

Fowler interrupts him: ''I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in 500 years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats.''

Fowler and Pyle, the quiet American of the title, compete for the attentions of Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. Love and war in an exotic locale is a cinematic staple, but in Greene's novels and screenplays the dominant triangle is God, guilt and Greene. Like ''Casablanca'' (1942) in World War II, ''The Third Man'' (1949), written by Greene, blends love and danger, but is set in cold war Vienna. Even an early Indochina movie, ''Red Dust'' (1932), finds Clark Gable running a rubber plantation while in a romantic triangle with Mary Astor and Jean Harlow.

Today, some filmgoers would argue that Michael Caine was born for the role of Fowler; others that he was born 20 years too soon. The power of his performance is in his face, a road map of the paths to glory he followed in earlier roles: his stand as Lieutenant Bromhead with Stanley Baker in ''Zulu'' (1962), and, as Peachy Carnehan, his trek to Kafiristan with Sean Connery's Danny Dravot in ''The Man Who Would Be King'' (1975). With no more dominion over palm and pine, Sir Michael's performance in this film is ripe with an antiheroic vulnerability imposed by age and dissolution, often punctuated with Lear-like rage. As Phuong tells Fowler, he is ''not so old, not so fragile.'' Brendan Fraser's Pyle is a study in cagy befuddlement. In one scene, he wears a Red Sox cap, a symbol of lethal innocence that had not occurred to Greene.

Greene, who died at 86 in 1991, has been translated onto the screen more than any 20th-century writer. His closest rival is Rudyard Kipling. In the New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson calls Greene a ''cinematic novelist'' for ample reason. In ''The Quiet American,'' for example, the plot unfolds in flashback. A film critic in the 1930's (when he admired the ''Shakespearean lunacy'' of the Marx Brothers), Greene did not follow Faulkner and Fitzgerald to California poolsides.

''Long Hollywood contracts -- sheet after closely printed sheet as long as the first treatment of the novel which is for sale -- ensure you have no 'author's rights,' '' he wrote in 1958. ''You rake the money, you go on writing for another year or two, you have no just ground for complaint. And the smile in the long run will be on your face. For the book has the longer life.

The most extreme changes I have seen in any book of mine were in 'The Quiet American'; one could almost believe that the film was made deliberately to attack the book and the author. . . . I am vain enough to believe that the book will survive a few years longer than Mr. Mankiewicz's incoherent picture.''

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed and wrote the screenplay for the 1958 movie of the novel, later called it ''the very bad film I made during a very unhappy time in my life.'' But Jean-Luc Godard called it the best movie of 1958. (That year's Oscar went to ''Gigi.'') Mankiewicz wanted Laurence Olivier to play Fowler and Montgomery Clift to play Pyle, but ended up with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy, a World War II hero. Claude Dauphin, the French actor, swipes scenes as Vigot. Bruce Cabot, in films a second banana to King Kong and John Wayne, sparkles as the bumptious and boozy American reporter, Granger.

The current version is not anti-American, Sir Michael insists, but ''anti the 300 to 400 people who started America's entry into the Vietnam War.'' Sir Michael describes himself as ''the most pro-American foreigner there is.'' The same could not be said for Fowler who, in the book, recalls explaining to Vigot the sarcastic title used to describe Pyle: ''He's a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental,'' he remembers saying, mentioning the hotel where the United States correspondents gathered. '' 'A quiet American.' I summed him precisely up as I might have said, 'a blue lizard,' 'a white elephant.' ''

Greene's characters, in their staggering search for redemption, often stockpile sin. While Fowler wallows in opium, booze and brothels, he is uninterested in nationalism, imperialism or Communism. For Greene, God and guilt always trump politics and its affectations.

''Be disloyal,'' a troll-like guru rants at a boy in ''Under the Garden,'' an autobiographical Greene short story of 1963. ''It's your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it's the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living, boy, and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent -- and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don't own, and they'll go on raising the price they are willing to offer. Didn't Christ say that very thing? Was the prodigal son loyal or the lost shilling or the strayed sheep?''

Fowler tells Pyle, ''I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.'' Greene occasionally wandered toward good intentions himself. In 1953, he told Waugh that he wanted to ''write about politics and not always about God.'' Waugh waspishly replied: ''I wouldn't give up writing about God at this stage if I was you. It would be like P. G. Wodehouse dropping Jeeves halfway through the Wooster series.''

The Quiet American review

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Saigon, 1952. London Times' correspondent Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) has carved out an agreeable life for himself. Ostensibly on long-term assignment covering the Vietnamese fight for independence from French colonial rule, he's enjoying the bustling city and carrying on a splendid affair with local beauty Phuong (Hai Yen). Then well-intentioned US aid worker Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) appears on the scene. At first, Fowler is happy to befriend this polite, quiet American and show him around his adopted city. It's not long, though, before Pyle has intentions towards Phuong and his very presence threatens the stability of Fowler's cosy existence.

Graham Greene's novel was a red-hot piece of symbolic political prophecy in the mid-'50s, humanising and foretelling the catastrophic results of the colonial rulers' efforts to retain control of their exotic Asian prize. Not to mention highlighting the blundering interference of the Yanks in the name of liberation. It's a shame, then, that this adaptation is a bit of a yawn.

Which isn't to say there's nothing to like; on the contrary, there's plenty. Caine is good, taking a character easily written off as a dirty old bugger and making him sympathetic and credible, while Brendan Fraser is well cast as "innocent" interloper Pyle. Yen also deserves mention, bringing unspoken depth to her potentially one-dimensional role.

But, God, is Phillip Noyce's movie hard work. In the absence of Greene's narrative voice, the characters spend a lot of time delivering long-winded speeches illustrating how their individual positions mirror the broader issues facing the Vietnamese, the colonial French or the American government, none of which exactly set the screen alight. Surprises are few and far between too, with Pyle's "hidden" motives so obvious to a modern audience that Fraser may as well be wearing a flashing neon sign. Add to this soporific proposition some truly glacial pacing and The Quiet American feels like an overlong history lesson taught by a faintly tedious professor; informative but not much fun.

Evocative, interesting and grown-up, The Quiet American painstakingly recreates Graham Greene's vision of a fascinating time and place. Shame it's so bloody boring.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

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The Quiet American

"I wish there was someone to whom I could say I was sorry," says Michael Redgrave's melancholy expatriate at the end of this film. The question emerges from the cynicism, guilt and yearning for redemption at the heart of this 1958 movie, adapted from Graham Greene's novel and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Redgrave is a world-weary foreign correspondent in 1950s Saigon, abjectly devoted to his Vietnamese mistress Phuong, or Phoenix, played by Giorgia Moll. (The non-Asian casting, as with Yul Brynner in The King and I, was of its time.) Audie Murphy is the eponymous American, a liberal idealist who has come out to promote a "third way" between French colonialism and communist insurgency, and ends up falling in love with Phuong.

The political dimension to the movie is devastatingly pertinent, as Redgrave and Murphy prophetically rehearse the debate about the "domino" effect in south-east Asia. But the spiritual dimension is more pertinent still, as Redgrave glimpses his own need for an elusive someone beyond the vanities of political settlement and romantic anguish. The absurdities and ironies of his own desolation yield up this question, a little like the "sense of humour" that Greene himself said allowed him to believe in God.

I am agnostic about Murphy's unsupple performance, but Redgrave is outstanding, Robert Krasker's monochrome cinematography is a thing of wonder, and Mankiewicz's direction is superb. Now there is a new version in the offing, currently at the test-screening stage, scripted by Christopher Hampton, with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser in the lead roles. It will have to be very good indeed to match this.

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The Quiet American Movie Review

• Holly McClure Movie Reviewer
• Updated May 01, 2013

Genre:   Drama, Thriller, War

Rating:   R (for images of violence and some language)

Release Date:   January 10, 2003 - NY, LA, CHI (wider release: February 7, top 20 markets; wider release: February 14, top 60 markets)

Actors:   Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen, Rade Serbedzija, Tzi Ma, Robert Stanton, Holmes Osborne, Nguyen Thi Hieu

Director:   Phillip Noyce

Special Notes:   It's been said that Miramax Film's Harvey Weinstein was hesitant to release this film in '02, over concerns that the film's purported anti-American tone (which in truth isn't even obvious) might strike an adverse chord with audiences still smarting from the shock waves of September 11.

Good:   From the classic adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel comes a murder mystery centered around a love triangle that takes place in colonial Indochina as the embattled country is in the middle of a war for control by the French, the Communists and eventually, the U.S.  Caine gives a wonderful and subtle performance as the burned out, jealous reporter who clings desperately to his love for Phuong and does anything he can to prevent losing her love.  He's not a moral or likable character, but you can't help but find yourself drawn to him as his steadfast, dignified demeanor looks like it could crumble at any moment over the love and intense possessiveness of Phuong. Fraser is good at playing the guileless, naïve and sort of one-dimensional characters, as well as darker roles (like in Gods and Monsters ). To his credit, you don't know if this character is really who Caine thinks he is or truly innocent and that worked for him until the end.  This is a beautifully filmed story that is full of metaphors about the war. Phuong represents Vietnam, the mistress of old Europe who is wooed by America trying naïvely to save and transform her. Pyle is the American idealist with naïve and sometimes dangerous aspirations that are blinded by his desire to save the damsel in distress. Fowler is the old-fashioned, humanitarian-minded European who wants to hold on to things the way they were. Through a lack of understanding the culture, both men (or nations if you are referring to the war) end up damaging her life and basically leaving her in the same situation she was in before. The love triangle becomes a war triangle and by the story's end, you see how easily it escalated to the Vietnam War.

Bottom Line:  Caine and Fraser deliver fine performances and the story has its moments of intrigue.  But like I said, since the movie gives away the fact that Frasier's character dies (and a few other plot points are given away early) the story doesn't have much impact in the end.  This is strictly an adult movie for fans of Caine's or Frasier's who enjoy a war drama.

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The Quiet American Reviews

Michael Redgrave's performance is the best thing about this thematically compromised piece.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 8, 2021

Mankiewicz probably got so much enjoyment from the writing that there was little enough left for filming it. Though a matter for regret, The Quiet American is still the most interesting film about at the moment.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2021

Mankiewicz (who also wrote the adapted screenplay) does a fine job balancing romance, intrigue and war.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 22, 2011

One of Mankiewicz's weaker films, a verbose, disappointingly sanitized version of Graham Greene's cynical novel about American involvement in Indo-China, with mediocre turns by Murphy and Redgrave.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Mar 26, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2003

The Quiet American is loosely adapted from Graham Greene's penetrating 1956 book about the Indo-China War.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Apr 21, 2003

The Quiet American Review

29 Nov 2002

101 minutes

Quiet American, The

Sliver, The Saint, The Bone Collector' even with a couple of Jack Ryan hits to his credit (Patriot Games, Clear And Present Danger), Phillip Noyce's career in the 1990s wasn't exactly a shining beacon in the Hollywood wilderness. And yet, here he is, delivering two very different, politically sensitive movies into UK cinemas in a single month.

While Rabbit-Proof Fence pricks the consciences of Noyce's fellow Australians by bringing a shameful episode in that country's history to light, The Quiet American raises questions about America's covert foreign policy in 1950s Vietnam.

The suggestion that the American government's meddling in Vietnamese politics - allegedly using the CIA to install a Washington-friendly military dictatorship - led indirectly to the Vietnam War is not one that's likely to go down well across the Atlantic in the current post-9/11, pre-Iraq Attack atmosphere. Hence Miramax's reluctance to give it more than a tiny US release in December to qualify it for Oscar consideration.

But Oscar nominations it richly deserves, not least for Michael Caine, whose performance as an English reporter goaded out of his comfortable, opium-clouded, ex-pat lifestyle ranks among the very best of his career. Caine brings dry wit and tragic self-knowledge to his character, while Brendan Fraser, as the love-struck Pyle, trades on his charismatic screen presence.

Actually, for the majority of the movie, the focus falls more on the love triangle than any anti-American political dimension. However, as in Graham Greene's source novel, this story element itself captures a sense of history passing the empirical baton from Britain (the rumpled Fowler) to America (the clean-cut Pyle). Noyce's film restores several of the essential qualities of Greene's book that were ironed out of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 adaptation.

Most impressive is the manner in which the director evokes time and place, both in the locations settings and through the characters' attitudes to a young Vietnamese girl they both want to 'protect' (read: 'possess').

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The Quiet American

• An old British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman.
• British Thomas Fowler enjoys his life in Saigon working as a reporter for the London Times, covering the war in Vietnam between the colonial French powers and the Communists, who seem to be winning the war. In the later stages of his career, he takes his job lightly now, filing stories only on occasion, and no longer doing field work. But most importantly, this posting allows him to escape from what he considers a dreary life in London, including an unsatisfying marriage to a Catholic woman, who will never grant him a divorce, which in turn allows him to have an affair with a young Vietnamese ex-taxi dancer named Phuong, whom he loves and would marry if he were able. Phuong's sister doesn't much like Fowler, if only because he cannot provide a stable future for her. His idyllic life is threatened when the head office suggests he go back to London. In this way, he decides to write a major story to prove to his superiors that he should stay in Saigon. In 1952, Fowler is called into the local Police Inspector's office to provide any information on his friend, thirty-ish American Alden Pyle, who has been found murdered. Fowler had met Pyle the previous year when he arrived in Vietnam to work as part of the American contingent in the Economic Aid Mission. Fowler and Pyle's relationship was not always harmonious, initially as Pyle admitted he too was in love with Phuong and wanted to marry her. That antagonistic relationship would extend to their professional lives, around Fowler believing that the story that would allow him to stay in Vietnam was the rise of a man named General Thé, and Pyle's belief that a third power should come in to take over Vietnam from both the French and the Communists. The question becomes whether Fowler knows more about Pyle's demise than he lets on to the Inspector. — Huggo
• A stylish political thriller where love and war collide in Southeast Asia. Set in early 1950s Vietnam, a young American becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle when he falls for the beautiful mistress of a British journalist. As war is waged around them, these three only sink deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems. — yusufpiskin
• Saigon, 1952, a beautiful, exotic, and mysterious city caught in the grips of the Vietnamese war of liberation from the French colonial powers. New arrival Alden Pyle, an idealistic American aid worker, befriends London Times correspondent Thomas Fowler. When Fowler introduces Pyle to his beautiful young Vietnamese mistress Phuong, the three become swept up in a tempestuous love triangle that leads to a series of startling revelations and finally, murder. Nothing, and no one, is as it seems, in this adaptation of Graham Greene's classic and prophetic story of love, betrayal, murder, and the origin of the American war in Vietnam.
• Love, politics, and intrigue intermingle in this taut retelling of Graham Greene's classic tale of a disillusioned British journalist, an idealistic young American, and the beautiful Vietnamese woman that comes between them in 1950s Saigon.
• [The first synopsis is a far shorter summary of the film with more of a historical context; appearing a few paragraphs down is a second, "chronological" synopsis of the film.] I. Set in the early 1950s in Saigon, Vietnam, during the end of the First Indochina War, on one level The Quiet American is a love story about the triangle that develops between a British journalist in his fifties, a young American idealist and a Vietnamese girl, but on another level it is also about the political turmoil and growing American involvement that led to the Vietnam War. Fowler, who narrates the story, is involved in the war only as an observer, apart from one crucial instant. Pyle, who represents America and its policies in Vietnam, is a CIA operative sent to steer the war according to Americas interests, and is passionately devoted to the ideas of York Harding, an American foreign policy theorist who said that what Vietnam needed was a third player to take the place of both the colonialists and the Vietnamese rebels and restore order. This third player was plainly meant to be America, and so Pyle sets about creating a Third Force against the Viet Minh by using a Vietnamese splinter group headed by corrupt militia leader General Thé (based on the actual Trinh Minh The). His arming of Thé's militia with American weaponry leads to a series of terrorist bombings in Saigon. These bombings, dishonestly blamed on the Communists in order to further American outrage, kill a number of innocent people, including women and children. Meanwhile, Pyle has stolen Fowlers Vietnamese mistress Phuong, promising her marriage and security. When Fowler finds out about Pyle's involvement in the bombings, he takes one definitive action to seal all of their fates. He indirectly agrees to let his assistant, Hinh, and his Communist cohorts confront Pyle; when Pyle tries to flee, Hinh fatally stabs him. Phuong subsequently returns to Fowler, and while the local French police commander suspects Fowler's role in Pyle's murder, he has no evidence and does not pursue the matter. [D-Man2010] ---------------------------------------------- II. It is Saigon in the early 1950s. Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) is a writer for the London Times, and he is covering the conflict between the Communists and the French in Indo-China (Vietnam). He is asked to identify the body of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser). Most of the rest of the film is a flashback. Fowler remembers how he met Pyle at the Hotel Continental in Saigon. He remembers that when he met him, Pyle was an enthusiastic and idealistic member of a medical aid team. Fowler next gets a telegram from his editor ordering him to return to London. Fowler writes a story about Phat Diem, which is a village being attacked by the Communists with the hope of getting his editor to let him stay. Fowler introduces his girlfriend, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), to Pyle. At a dance hall, Pyle dances with Phuong. He tells her that he can only speak two words in Vietnamese, beer and haircut. Her older sister (Pham Thi Mai Hoa) hopes to get Phuong attached to Pyle, who she obviously considers a better match than Fowler. Fowler tells Phuong that he must return to London, but that he cant get a divorce from his wife. Later, Fowler is with soldiers investigating Phat Diem, when Pyle appears in a boat, surprising everyone. They find the villagers massacred. That night, Fowler and Pyle are together, and Pyle tells Fowler that he has fallen in love with Phuong. Pyle returns to Saigon first, and when Fowler returns to Saigon he watches a parade to honor General The (pronounced Tay; Quang Hai), who is the leader of a new political party. Afterwards, Pyle comes to Fowlers house, and he proposes to Phuong, but she rejects him, and he leaves. Fowler's editor now wants him to stay in Saigon on account of his story about the massacre. He writes to his wife seeking a divorce, and he tells Phuong that he is doing so. Much later, Fowler drives to the front to interview The and is surprised to see Pyle with his medical team. Fowler can't get to see The, but Pyle arranges an interview for him. Fowler angers The with his questions, and the interview ends. Fowler and Pyle leave together in Fowlers car. Apparently, the Vietnamese have siphoned the gas from Fowlers car, and it runs out of gas on the way back to Saigon. They are in a tower in a village when the village comes under attack. Fowler hurts his ankle, and Pyle goes for assistance. In a further flashback, Fowler remembers how he first met Phuong at a dance hall. Pyle returns and they go back to Saigon. Phuong welcomes Fowler back and gives him a letter from his wife. Fowler tells Phuong that his wife has given him a divorce. However, later, Pyle, Phuong and her sister accuse Fowler of lying about the divorce. Fowler and his Vietnamese colleague, Hinh (Tzi Ma), uncover a shipment of diolacton at a warehouse. They dont know what diolacton is. Phuong leaves Fowler for Pyle. Subsequently, Fowler is sitting on the porch of the Continental Hotel. There is a terrific explosion, and horrific death and injuries. Fowler, in a daze, tries to help. He sees Fowler at the scene. Later, he realizes that Pyle was speaking Vietnamese. Fowler finds out that diolacton is used to make explosives, and he figures out that the Americans are supplying The with explosives. Hinh informs Fowler that Pyle works for the CIA. At Hinh's suggestion, Fowler invites Pyle to his house. Pyle brings his dog with him. Pyle defends The as someone who can inspire the people and stop the advance of Communism. Fowler arranges to meet Pyle at a restaurant that evening. We next see him sitting at the restaurant outdoors, and he watches Pyle cross a bridge with his dog. We next see Pyle kidnapped by Hinh's men with knives. Later, he escapes from them and is running away when he is re-captured by one of the men who stabs him to death. After seeing Hinh leave the area, Fowler leaves the restaurant. Later, the policeman suggests that Pyle had been to see Fowler because Pyles (also) murdered dog had cement from the floor of Fowlers house on its paws. Fowler tells the police that he didnt kill Pyle, and "there is a war on and people are dying every day." It is not clear whether Fowler set up the murder to help Hinh stop the CIA's involvement in Vietnam or to kill his girlfriend's lover, or (most likely) both. In the end, Fowler goes back to the dance hall and tries to get Phuong to dance with him. Phuong tells him to dance with someone else, until he tells her that he will never leave. Fowler says that he feels a need to apologize to someone, but Phuong says "not to me, never to me." Afterwards, news headlines show the beginning and full-fledged advance of the American involvement in the Vietnam war. Its not clear whether we are supposed to think that Fowler's helping Hinh murder Pyle led to the American war in Vietnam.

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THE QUIET AMERICAN

What You Need To Know:

(HH, CoCo, APAP, LL, VV, S, A, DD, M) Humanist worldview with some Communist and anti-American elements; about 14 obscenities (including one or two "f" words) and three strong profanities; action, wartime violence includes mortar fire, machine guns, explosions, terrorist bombing with limbs torn off, and assassination; implied adultery, cohabitation before marriage and men enter house of prostitution but no sex or nudity shown; no nudity, but woman's bare back shown from afar in love scene; alcohol use; smoking and opium use; and, lying, deceit, assassination, political manipulation implicitly rebuked.

GENRE: Thriller

More Detail:

Based on a famous novel by Graham Greene, THE QUIET AMERICAN tries to answer the questions how and why the United States entered the Vietnam War. Its answers are not entirely satisfying, however. They leave out several major issues.

THE QUIET AMERICAN stars Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler, a tired British journalist living with a young Vietnamese woman, Phuong, in Saigon in 1952. The French are still fighting the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, but the American embassy has been helping the French behind the scenes. Fowler has a wife in England, but she is Roman Catholic and refuses to grant him a divorce.

One day, Fowler meets a young American named Alden Pyle, who is part of an economic aid program from the U.S. Fowler introduces Pyle to his mistress, and Pyle is immediately taken with her exotic beauty. At first, Fowler is amused by Pyle’s attraction, but then he grows worried. He angrily tells Pyle to buzz off, even when Phuong declines Pyle’s declaration of love.

The war throws Fowler and Pyle together again, however. Fowler takes a renewed liking to the charming American, especially when Pyle saves his life. Even so, a letter from Fowler’s wife drastically changes the situation. Fowler then becomes suspicious of Pyle’s role in a plot by American intelligence to support a charismatic Vietnamese general, who decides to lead a new movement to fight both the Communists and the French. The truth is revealed, a tragedy occurs, and Fowler takes drastic action that will change all their lives.

THE QUIET AMERICAN implicates the American CIA in a terrorist bombing in the story that was meant to kill soldiers but ends up killing civilians, including a little baby. Although the movie shows that it was the Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, who decided to invade South Vietnam, forcing the Americans to increase their presence, it ultimately puts the blame squarely on the U.S.A. for meddling in the political and military affairs of Vietnam. The movie fails to mention, however, the support that the Communists received from despicable, murderous regimes like the Soviet Union and Communist China. Nor does the movie show the fact that, despite the defeat that America suffered in Vietnam, America’s involvement there helped Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan become strong, relatively democratic economic powers. Thus, it can be argued that, without the Vietnam War, which contained Communism for a time, these countries would never have been able to achieve the success that they did. Of course, it remains to be seen whether liberty will actually survive in Southeast Asia and China. There are still totalitarian forces at work in that area of the world, as there are totalitarian forces at work in the United States itself.

As usual, Michael Caine does a bang-up job as the morally ambiguous Fowler. Brendan Fraser is not so compelling as Pyle, however. Part of the problem, though, seems to be the poorly scripted character, who just isn’t believable. Hai Yen as the lovely Phuong also is not so convincing as the elder Fowler’s young mistress. The filmmakers have not succeeded in making these younger characters come alive. They probably should have made these characters older, to give more weight to their story. Also, there is a hole in the plot, in that it should have taken Fowler less time to become suspicious of Pyle. This is so especially when Pyle keeps showing up in military situations, where he demonstrates an ability beyond his character’s alleged background.

Despite these flaws, the filmmakers have succeeded in taking Vietnam back to an earlier time, when nations and political/military leaders would take crucial actions that would have repercussions for many decades later. It may have been more interesting to get even more involved in this atmosphere, instead of reducing the situation to a romantic triangle and a relatively superficial political thriller.

Please address your comments to:

Bob and Harvey Weinstein

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Miramax Films

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New York, NY 10013

Phone: (323) 822-4100 & (212) 941-3800

Fax: (212) 941-3846

Website: www.miramax.com

SUMMARY: THE QUIET AMERICAN tells the story of a middle-aged British journalist in Saigon, Vietnam, who gets involved in a romantic triangle with an American spy, which leads to political murder. This uneven movie has its charms, which include an excellent performance by Michael Caine and plenty of atmosphere, but it takes a humanist, pro-Communist, anti-American slant despite some ambiguity.

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Review: ‘Civil War’ shows an America long past unraveling, which makes it necessary

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The sharp crack of a snare drum, shuffling along at an insistent martial clip, is what first kicks “Civil War” into gear. The beat is joined by some menacing electronic bloops and nervous muttering, and while you may assume this is the work of some promising young bedroom producer, it’s actually a 1968 track, “Lovefingers,” by the radical duo Silver Apples.

Somehow, the music matches the nervous, revolutionary energy on screen: the unlikely sight of an angry Brooklyn patrolled by troops, hundreds of people clashing in the streets, a suicide bomber putting an abrupt punctuation to it all. “Civil War” will remind you of the great combat films, the nauseating artillery ping of “Saving Private Ryan,” the surreal up-is-down journey of “Apocalypse Now.” It also bears a pronounced connection to the 2002 zombie road movie scripted by its writer-director Alex Garland, “28 Days Later,” a production that straddled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and arrived in theaters scarred by timeliness.

It’s the nowness of “Civil War” that will be much discussed. The movie takes place in an America that’s been amplified from its current state of near-insurrection, but only slightly, a distance that feels troublingly small. An autocratic third-term president ( Nick Offerman ) practices a pompous speech in front of a teleprompter. California and Texas have seceded, becoming unlikely allies in a campaign to retake the capital. The suburban landscape is strewn with bombed-out malls, vicious intolerance and, most spookily of all, an occasional town in which everything seems normal, where a blasé salesclerk can be aware of the country falling apart one state over but still put up a personal wall. “We just try to stay out,” she says.

To the British-born Garland, a maker of thematically rich sci-fi films that play more like broken mirrors ( “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation” ), apathy is the real enemy. “Civil War” shudders with doleful fury. It’s not a “fun” fascist dystopia like John Carpenter ’s immortal “Escape from New York” or the Garland-scripted 2012 “Dredd,” but one in which we’re meant to feel the irrevocable loss of something bigger with each frame.

Accordingly, Garland makes his heroes a pair of photojournalists, one hard-nosed, the other, a budding junkie. As played by an unusually grave and commanding Kirsten Dunst, Lee knows from many a rubble-strewn hot spot and seems long past the irony of discovering one at home. Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, emerging from the soft passivity of “Priscilla” ) only wants some action. If colleges still existed, she’d be graduating from one. Instead, she hopes to sneak into the school of Lee’s fearlessness. The elder newshound looks at this unwanted disciple with weary eyes that recognize a shared curse. “That’s a great photo,” she tells Jessie, sadly.

They, along with Lee’s writer colleague Joel (the fine Brazilian actor Wagner Moura ) and a veteran journalist, Sammy ( Stephen McKinley Henderson ), who works for a much-diminished, perhaps criminalized New York Times, are making a run from New York City to Washington, D.C., where they hope to interview the president, bunkered in the White House and on the brink of surrender. “It’s the only story left,” insists Joel, even as we hear that press members have a tendency to get shot on the South Lawn.

“Civil War” then becomes a thrillingly dark road trip, studded by moments of explosive tension and dangerous misjudgment that play less like bite-size episodes of “The Last of Us” than signposts of an overall political condition. (If you love post-apocalyptic journeys, buckle up — the tank’s full.) Some of Garland’s imagery is overly familiar, like the line of abandoned cars that stretches to the horizon. He also leans hard on some overaesthetized slo-mo pageantry that, combined with the occasional indie-guitar strums on the soundtrack, threaten to turn his concept into a Statement.

But the scenes that work will get you thinking. Garland is strongest with impressions: chirping birds over bloody lawns, the laconic humor of exhausted soldiers on a stakeout, a quick shot of Lee deleting some of her own photos, a private mode of self-care. In one scene, a frighteningly calm xenophobe with a rifle (Jesse Plemons) menaces from behind red-tinted lenses.“What kind of American are you?” he asks, finger on the trigger, the movie sharpening into something unbearable.

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For some, those glasses will be bait enough, a MAGA hat to coastal bulls. But for the most part, what Garland is after is less accusatory and more provocative, detached from the kind of red-state-blue-state binary that would trap “Civil War” in amber before it had a chance to breathe. Do we deserve a democracy if we can barely speak to each other? This is a film set in a future when words no longer matter. Even the final words of power-grabbing leaders disappoint.

At some point, the hugeness of modern-day military hardware, much of it digitally rendered, sweeps in, the pounding rotors of helicopters and urban street-clearing machinery orchestrated into an overwhelming last act. The shock of watching tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue is a disquieting vision best experienced in a multiplex, not real life. But the takeaway isn’t exhilaration; the unease is what makes Garland’s film valuable. You watch it with your jaw hanging open.

What of our heroic journalists? Dunst and Spaeny continue a long-telegraphed transfer of status, both actors digging for expressions beyond stunned, but this isn’t a chatty film. Its main purpose is to turn us into observers ourselves. And regardless of what may come ahead — at the movies and beyond — there won’t be a more important film this year.

'Civil War'

Rating: R, for strong violent content, bloody/disturbing images, and language throughout Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, April 12

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Joshua Rothkopf is film editor of the Los Angeles Times. He most recently served as senior movies editor at Entertainment Weekly. Before then, Rothkopf spent 16 years at Time Out New York, where he was film editor and senior film critic. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Sight and Sound, Empire, Rolling Stone and In These Times, where he was chief film critic from 1999 to 2003.

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‘a quiet place: day one’ trailer brings chills to cinemacon as paramount forges ahead despite sale talks.

An undeterred Paramount chief Brian Robbins — who addressed the elephant in the room by joking that his top exec Chris Aronson has started a Kickstarter campaign — went on to announce a bold and ambitious slate all the way through 2025 and into 2026.

By Pamela McClintock

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Senior Film Writer

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Paramount’s A Quiet Place : Day One is getting ready to bring chills to audiences.

Stars Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn on Thursday introduced extended footage of the prequel to movie theater owners gathered in Las Vegas this week for CinemaCon , where they are being briefed by Hollywood studios on their upcoming slates (the footage won’t be shared outside the room, since the movie is close to opening and there have been numerous trailers already).

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Krasinksi is a key member of Paramount’s inner circle of filmmakers, along with Neal H. Moritz, Ryan Reynolds and Damien Chazelle. During his time onstage Thursday, Paramount film boss Brian Robbins announced that Krasinski has renewed his first-look deal with Paramount. There’s also a new deal with Moritz, while Reynold’s Maximum Effort recently reupped its pact with the studio. Krasinski and Reynolds are also behind Paramount’s May pic IF, which was likewise was featured during Paramount’s CinemaCon presentation.

With these announcements, Robbins isn’t letting looming chances of a Viacom/Paramount sale stop him for pushing ahead and plotting out his slate. To the contrary, much of Thursday’s presentation focused on 2025 titles, several of them new, and even titles dated for 2026. “Simply put, we are a home for the most talented filmmakers and storytellers, and we have a bold and diverse slate of films coming your way,” Robbins said.

The acerbic exec didn’t try to ignore the very large elephant in the room when taking the stage at CinemaCon to speak to theater owners: “There’s been a lot of speculation about our parent company, around MMA activity, and in fact, our very own Chris Aronson has thrown his hat into the ring as a bidder for Paramount Pictures. He’s started a Kickstarter campaign.”

Set within the same world of the first two Quiet Place movies — where blind, monster-like aliens hunt down anything making a sound — the story switches from the Abbott family and follows a woman played by Nyong’o as she navigates the horrific first moments of the alien vision in New York City. She soon joins up with a fellow city resident and together they try to survive living in the loudest city in the world — which now must be quiet.

“The story is at a scale more compelling and more terrifying than ever,” Nyong’o told exhibitors.

The extended trailer captures the essence of what it might be like to find yourself trapped in a quiet New York, trying to find aliens who can maneuver everywhere: skyscraper walls, tunnels, etc. Together, the two young characters must find a way to escape the city and protect those they find along the way.

The Paramount film is based on an original idea from A Quiet Place filmmaker Krasinski and is directed by Pig’ s Michael Sarnoski, who also wrote the script. Along with Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou and Denis O’Hare also star.

A Quiet Place became a surprise smash in 2018, turning Krasinski into an A-list director. It earned $340.9 million globally, with the sequel, A Quiet Place Part II , grossing $297.3 million globally in 2021, a strong showing as the theatrical business was coming out of the pandemic.

The Quiet Place franchise was born from an original spec script by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, who shared screenplay credit with Krasisnki. He performed his own work on the script after boarding as director. Krasinski is also developing A Quiet Place: Part III .

A Quiet Place: Day One is due out in theaters March 8, 2024. Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller and Krasinski are producing the feature.

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