REVIEW (WEB EXCLUSIVE)


Christopher Hampton's screenplay for this film, adapted from a 1955 novel by Graham Greene, has history on its side. When Greene wrote this tale of personal and political betrayal in early '50s Vietnam, he was exercising his own acute talent in pinpointing geopolitical situations where moral ambiguity festers like a rash. Just as The Third Man's post WWII Vienna, "monitored" by no less than four international police forces, was the perfect backdrop for the tale of the personal betrayals enacted by Holly Martins, Harry Lime, and Anna Schmidt, so does the Vietnam of The Quiet American provide an ideal setting for the squirm-inducing romantic chess game enacted by aging British journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), his young mistress Phuong (Do Thi Ha Yen) and well-meaning Yank interventionist Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser). While Greene probably took some retrospective pleasure in indirectly prophesizing what a morass Vietnam would become for its U.S. interventionists, when he wrote his novel immediacy was his aim. In adapting said novel from the perspective of subsequent events (the book has been made into a movie before, in 1958, by Joseph Mankiewiecz and starring real-life war hero Audie Murphy-needless to say, its political perspective was markedly different from Greene's), Hampton is able to make sweeping points that Greene could not.

Which is part of this challenging movie's problem. There is much here that is sublime-Caine's not just perfectly judged, but impeccably executed performance as a man whose know-it-all insouciance is shattered when his (sham) romantic entanglement-his colonial "good thing" as it were-is threatened by a young, attractive interloper; Christopher Doyle's breathtaking cinematography, which captures all that is both beautiful and oppressive about the Vietnamese landscape; some scenes of conflict and suspense that are pulled cuttingly taut by Phillip Noyce's direction. But for every telling and true moment-a glimpse of Phuong dancing unseen (she thinks) to a scratchy recording of the Tin Pan Alley standard "My Man," for instance-there's a bit that's cornily packed with portent. "He's with the O.A.S.?" Caine's Fowler asks of one character at a late point in the film. "They have a different name now," Fowler's trusty Vietnamese helpmate responds: "The C.I.A." At that point you pretty much expect the soundtrack to kick in with a "whomp-whomp-wham," just in case you didn't get the point. It's irritating when a movie that shows such delicacy and acuteness at certain points resorts to ham-handed tactics at others. And in this case, it's a particular shame, because there's an almost great film here.

--Glenn Kenny