Phillip Noyce’s The Quiet American is a good film with a solid pedigree both in front of and, more specifically, behind the camera.  It's important to start this review off with that sentence, especially when you take into account the most recent efforts of the two acting leads (Goldmember and The Mummy Returns).  But American is a serious and timely picture – so serious and timely that we were almost deprived of a chance to see it.  It was originally due in theatres during the aftermath of 9/11 (it was test-screened the day before the attacks), but quickly and indefinitely yanked from the release schedule. With the current state of the Middle East, American seems even more serious and timely now, but thanks to a bit of a Caine mutiny, the distributor finally relented to a late-year Oscar-qualifying run.

Based on Graham Greene's eerily cautious 1955 novel (Joseph L. Mankiewicz already made it into a film back in 1958 with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy), American is set in 1952 Saigon and focuses on the events that lead up to the US's involvement in Vietnam.  The catch, if you noticed the dates, is that Greene's story (and Mankiewicz's film) were both made before the whole Vietnam thing came to a head.  His tale is an ominous look at how the US might become drawn into Southeast Asia and what the consequences might be if they did.  When you compare it to the US's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few decades, it's almost enough to give you chills.

Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a London Times correspondent in Saigon who, in the film's first scene, is asked to make a late-night body ID at the local morgue.  The stiff is Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), a Beantown native who is part of a US economic mission trying to bring medical supplies into Vietnam, and who we'll later learn is the titular Quiet American (and he's being particularly quiet as he lies on that slab).  After Fowler heads over to the home of Pyle's girlfriend Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) to give her the bad news, we're dumped into a flashback that begins with Fowler's first meeting with Pyle at an outdoor café – one of those cynical-veteran-meets-idealistic-young-guy things.

Fowler, meanwhile, is about to have his ass shipped back to London if he can't make with a big story.  He tries to interview the country's newest General about a bloody massacre at Phat Diem but seems unable to make it happen.  Along the way, we learn that Phuong was originally Fowler's girlfriend, but she left him because his wife back in the UK refused to divorce him.  As the film progresses, Fowler begins to take notice of odd clues pertaining to Pyle.  Is his "Aw, shucks" routine just a ruse, or has all that opium (replacing Caine's Cider House ether) finally deadened the Brit's mental capacity?

American is a lot like The Third Man, which was also written by Greene and featured a story about an addicted writer and a his friend who wasn't at all what he seemed.  It feels like something made in the mid '70s, but in a good way, like The Bourne Identity (and not like The Tailor of Panama). While parts of the story were a bit clunky - screenwriter Christopher Hampton has penned a string of inconsistent period-drama adaptations from The Secret Agent to Mary Reilly – another Christopher (as in Doyle) nearly steals the show with some of the year's finest cinematography.  Doyle, who has done smashing work on the films of Wong Kar-Wai, also shot American director and fellow Aussie Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, which, although filmed much earlier, is being released around the same time.

Caine's work is likely to garner more attention than Doyle's, though. It's among the best of his career, and his narration is spot-on.  Ditto for Fraser, though that statement isn't quite as impressive given his filmography thus far.  Their scenes together reminded me a lot of something written by David Mamet, with characters saying one thing but meaning something completely different.  Especially entertaining were their two very uncomfortable scenes with Phuong as they civilly bickered over her, even though you could toss a rock out the window and hit a dozen Phuongs.  Their odd relationships might just be a metaphor for the relations between England, America and Vietnam.

1:41 –

for images of violence and some language