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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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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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The Quiet American

An old British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman. An old British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman. An old British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman.

• Phillip Noyce
• Graham Greene
• Christopher Hampton
• Robert Schenkkan
• Michael Caine
• Brendan Fraser
• Do Thi Hai Yen
• 214 User reviews
• 76 Critic reviews
• 84 Metascore
• 13 wins & 14 nominations total

• Thomas Fowler

• (as Thi Hai Yen Do)

• Inspector Vigot
• (as Rade Sherbedgia)

• Bill Granger
• General Thé

• Phuong's Sister
• French Captain
• Watch Tower Soldier

• American Photographer

• Dancing American
• House of 500 Girls' Singer
• Muoi's Henchman
• (as Nguyen Ha Phong)

• House of 500 Girls' Woman
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Director Phillip Noyce wanted Heath Ledger to play the role of Alden Pyle, but was happy with Brendan Fraser's work in this movie.
• Goofs When Fowler is reading his report of the massacre in The Times, the text says "120 kilometers". In the unlikely event that an English journalist in the 1950s would use kilometers instead of miles, he would have spelled it "kilometres". Also, the text reads that Phat Diem is "120 kilometers north of Hanoi" when, in fact, it is 120 kilometers SOUTH of Hanoi.

Thomas Fowler : I know I am behaving badly, but I have every intention of behaving badly. As a matter of fact, this is exactly the kind of situation where one should behave badly.

• Connections Featured in Anatomy of a Scene: The Quiet American (2002)
• Soundtracks Nuoc Non Lam Son Written by Hoang Quy Performed by Manh Phat

User reviews 214

• Aug 10, 2003
• How long is The Quiet American? Powered by Alexa
• March 7, 2003 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Studio Canal
• Graham Greene's Quiet American
• Da Nang, Vietnam
• Intermedia Films
• Mirage Enterprises
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $30,000,000 (estimated)
• $12,988,801
• Nov 24, 2002
• $27,674,124

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 41 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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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 Review

22 Nov 2002

117 minutes

Quiet American, The

Flashing back from the murder of its morally complex hero and exploring themes as diverse as colonialism, duty and faith, this intense analysis of the superpowers' right to settle distant disputes to their own advantage may be set in the 1950s, but it still resonates with significance.

Graham Greene detested this adaptation of his scathing assault on American interventionism in the Third World. Then again, he rarely approved of screen versions of his novels.

However, in this case, he has a point, as Joseph L. Mankiewicz cynically manipulates the story's political sting to reduce it to a personality clash between Audie Murphy's callow philanthropist and Michael Redgrave's world-weary war correspondent, who not only disagree over the future of what was then French Indo-China, but who also love the same girl.

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The Quiet American

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

In limited release to qualify for the Oscars, The Quiet American is a towering achievement with a soul-baring performance by Michael Caine that deserves the highest praise. Based on Graham Greene’s 1955 novel that skewers early U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the film boasts a probing script by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan. It’s a personal best for Aussie director Phillip Noyce, on a roll with his remarkable Rabbit-Proof Fence (the factual story of three aboriginal girls fighting white colonialists).

Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a veteran London Times journalist assigned to Saigon, circa 1952. The married Thomas has taken a teen mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), who supplies him with sex and opium. What Caine shows to piercing effect is the love Thomas feels for the girl, a love threatened by the arrival of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser is strikingly good), the deceptively naive American who may be behind a bombing in Saigon Square charged to the communists. Noyce stages the action to stunning effect, and he brings delicacy to the battle waged by the men over Phuong, a symbol of her country. Caine has never been better, which is saying something. He puts a human face on a tragic era of history in a film that ranks with the year’s finest.

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; A Jaded Affair in a Vietnam Already at War

By Stephen Holden

• Nov. 22, 2002

The mood of wry disillusion that seeps through the screen adaptation of Graham Greene's novel ''The Quiet American'' is sounded in the movie's opening moments by the voice of Michael Caine musing dreamily on the mystique of Saigon in the early 1950's. It is a place, declares his character, Thomas Fowler, where colors and tastes seem sharper than they do elsewhere and where even the rain has a special intensity. People who go to Saigon in search of something, he suggests in a silky murmur, are likely to find it. That something has everything to do with faraway places and a mirage of sex and adventure in an exotic clime.

Fowler is a wistfully cynical British journalist who has fled an arid marriage in England to live in Southeast Asia, where he is reporting on the Vietnamese fight for independence from French colonial rule. His attitude toward the political turmoil swirling around him is one of studied detachment bordering on disinterest. Only when Fowler is in danger of being summoned back to England does he bestir himself to go into the field and pursue a story juicy enough to keep him at his post.

But beneath his worldly facade lurks a streak of romantic fatalism. Fowler is hopelessly besotted with Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), a beautiful former taxi dancer who embodies the Asian feminine stereotype of compliance and impenetrable erotic mystery. Although Phuong lives with Fowler and is financially dependent on him, the relationship can last only as long as he keeps his job. Although he would love nothing more than to take her back to England, his wife adamantly refuses to grant him a divorce.

Fowler may be the richest character of Mr. Caine's screen career. Slipping into his skin with an effortless grace, this great English actor gives a performance of astonishing understatement whose tone wavers delicately between irony and sadness. Fowler is the embodiment of a now-faded British archetype: the suave, impeccably well-mannered man of the world who keeps a stiff upper lip and camouflages any inner torment under a pose of amused knowingness.

Mr. Caine, with his hooded snake eyes and his trace of a Cockney accent, lends Fowler (played by Michael Redgrave in an earlier screen adaptation of the novel) an added frisson of rakish insouciance that makes the character all the more intriguing.

''The Quiet American'' is the story of a romantic triangle involving Fowler, Phuong and Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), an American intelligence agent operating under the guise of an economic aid worker. Mr. Fraser, looking puffy and wide-eyed, plays Pyle as an earnest, gawky naïf. It is a brave but uncomfortable performance. Even after his character is revealed to be an American spy who speaks fluent Vietnamese, he makes Pyle's lumbering bluntness appear almost comically oafish.

The story begins with Pyle's murder, then flashes back to fill in the whys and wherefores. As the film digs into the characters' relationships, it re-examines the notion that the personal is political in the context of 1950's cold war mentality and the slow fade of the British Empire. Fowler and Pyle's friendship, which rests on quaint notions of gallantry and honor among gentlemen, is also a metaphor for competing styles of imperialism, one wearily resigned, the other aggressively intrusive.

No sooner has Fowler introduced Pyle to Phuong than Pyle falls madly in love with her. Once smitten, Pyle feels no compunction about blurting his feelings about her to Fowler. Pyle's campaign for Phuong has the support of her avaricious older sister Miss Hei (Pham Thi Mai Hoa), who sees him as a bright marital prospect for Phuong.

After Fowler is caught in a desperate lie and Phuong abandons him to live with Pyle, the two men maintain a civilized friendship. Despite their shared passion for the same woman, the movie implies that both view her as a precious toy who can be bartered in a sporting may-the-best-man-win atmosphere. And in the film's most dramatic scene, Pyle saves his rival's life after the two find themselves stranded on the road between Phat Diem and Saigon and take refuge in a French watchtower that is raided by Communist forces.

It could be said that their feelings for Phuong are meant to reflect their countries' different but equally patronizing attitudes toward Indochina. Where Fowler, ever the detached journalist, affects indifference to the Vietnamese struggle, Pyle is a meddling anti-Communist zealot who has no qualms about helping foment resistance to Communist forces by funneling weapons to a ruthless Vietnamese warlord (Quang Hai).

If ''The Quiet American'' unequivocally views American intervention in Vietnam as an arrogant blunder, the movie, directed by Phillip Noyce from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan, doesn't convey much strong political passion. Pyle may be buffoonish, but he's not evil. Although a coda to the movie links the events of the story to American prosecution of the Vietnam War a decade later, that afterword seems a convenient formality.

The movie is ultimately more interested in the characters' relationships than in their politics, and it does a superb job of evoking the psychological world of Graham Greene in which the truth of any situation tends to be hidden and riddled with ambiguities. Because ''The Quiet American,'' which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, is told through Fowler's eyes, its drama is muted. More than once violence explodes on the screen, but it seems to come out of the blue in random bursts. Even then, the film conveys little of the excitement or the sense of historical imperatives that drive a movie like ''The Year of Living Dangerously.''

In burrowing deeply into Fowler's consciousness, however, ''The Quiet American'' beautifully sustains the mood set by Mr. Caine's opening narration. The world as seen through Fowler's eyes may be a shabby paradise on the verge of ruin. But as he ponders his fate under Japanese lanterns at a riverside cafe in Saigon in the heat of the night, its tawdry glamour exerts a sad but irresistible tug.

''The Quiet American'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual situations and some violence.

THE QUIET AMERICAN

Directed by Phillip Noyce; written by Robert Schenkkan and Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Graham Greene; director of photography, Christopher Doyle; edited by John Scott; music by Craig Armstrong; production designer, Roger Ford; produced by William Horberg and Staffan Ahrenberg; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 146 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Michael Caine (Thomas Fowler), Brendan Fraser (Alden Pyle), Do Thi Hai Yen (Phuong), Tzi Ma (Hinh), Robert Stanton (Joe Tunney), Pham Thi Mai Hoa (Miss Hei) and Quong Hai (General Thé).

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The quiet american.

2002 Directed by Phillip Noyce

In war, the most powerful weapon is seduction.

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, the trio sinks deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems.

Michael Caine Brendan Fraser Do Thi Hai Yen Tzi Ma Rade Šerbedžija Robert Stanton Holmes Osborne Quang Hai Ferdinand Hoang Pham Thi Mai Hoa Mathias Mlekuz Kevin Tran Lap Phan Tim Bennett Jeff Truman Hong Nhung Lucia Noyce Hiliary Douglas Daniel Hung Nguyen Kim Hoan Trinh Mal Nguyen Trong Pham Tran Do Luc Công Lý George Mangos Natasha Hunter Martine Monroe Jose De la Vega Roland Rohrer Show All… Susan Parry Nguyen Anh Dung Peter Holdsworth Ngoc Tuan Hoang Trece Lambatan Erwin Abarico Jun Javier Van Phuoc Nguyen Mark Szeto Askar Nurlanov Douglas Gallagher Nicholas Parry Vov Dylan

Director Director

Phillip Noyce

Producers Producers

William Horberg Staffan Ahrenberg Matthias Deyle

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Anthony Minghella Sydney Pollack Guy East Moritz Borman

Writers Writers

Christopher Hampton Robert Schenkkan

Original Writer Original Writer

Graham Greene

Casting Casting

Christine King

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

Christopher Doyle

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Mark Goellnicht Nguyễn Hữu Tuấn Brad Shield

Lighting Lighting

Glen Jenkins

Additional Photography Add. Photography

David Burr Brad Shield

Production Design Production Design

Art direction art direction.

Annie Beauchamp Jeffrey Thorp

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Kerrie Brown Jennifer Alisa Kornkosar

Choreography Choreography

Sonia Kruger

Composer Composer

Craig Armstrong

Costume Design Costume Design

Norma Moriceau

Mirage Enterprises IMF Internationale Medien und Film GmbH & Co. 2. Produktions KG Giai Phong Film Studio Saga Pictures Miramax Intermedia Senator International

France Germany UK USA Vietnam

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English French Vietnamese

Releases by Date

09 sep 2002, 22 nov 2002, 29 nov 2002, 31 jan 2003, 22 may 2003, 12 jun 2003, 20 aug 2003, 01 oct 2021, 01 mar 2022, 07 apr 2004, releases by country.

• Theatrical 12+
• Physical DVD
• Digital VOD
• Digital U Prime Video
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical R

101 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★½

Cinematic Time Capsule 2002 Marathon - Film #128

”It’s not that easy to remain uninvolved”

It's two guys and a Vietnamese girl in an international love triangle when Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser find themselves competing for the same woman. As war is waged all around them they sink deeper and deeper into romantic, political and cultural conflicts.

Fraser is solid as the quiet American, but it’s Caine’s oscar-nominated performance that makes the movie worth watching.

”I just report what I see”

Cinematic Time Capsule - 2002 Ranked

Review by WraithApe ★★★½

Representatives of two colonial powers, old and new, lock horns over a Vietnamese babe in Philip Noyce's elegant adaptation of Graham Greene's novel. Now I must confess I haven't read the book, but if you told me that it was better than the film, I wouldn't struggle to believe you. It's not that it's bad - on the contrary, Michael Caine in particular delivers an excellent central performance as embedded British journalist Thomas Fowler - it's just that the balance between romance and political intrigue seems heavily skewed in favour of the former. I could well imagine Greene's book having more satirical bite.

The film takes place in the early 50s, focusing on the collapse of French colonialism at the…

Review by Enfant du Siècle ★★★½

An English journalist, a beautiful Vietnamese woman, and a young American are wrapped in a love triangle in Saigon during the early 1950s while French Indochina is on the verge of collapse, the communist forces of the Việt Minh are forcefully advancing in their mission to overthrow foreign colonialism, and U.S. interventionism, which would end up unleashing a vicious war, is becoming increasingly evident. The Quiet American is a film with a simple and easy to elucidate plot but genuinely suggestive, and in which the relationship between the protagonists serves as a cruel metaphor that illustrates the situation of the Asian country. Among its great virtues are the atmosphere created that manages to take the viewer to that exotic land…

Review by shahbakht ★★★½ 4

I wonder what Graham Greene thought of John le Carré? I know they met, but I can't find any resources on Greene talking about le Carré as a matter of public record. It's so clear the connective tissue between their work (le Carré wrote The Tailor of Panama as a direct homage to Our Man in Havana ).

Anyway, terrific movie. Michael Caine is brilliant. Brendan Fraser making another interesting choice during his ascendancy post The Mummy .

Review by Jackson ★★★

The Quiet American actually surprised my expectations, and gave me a totally likable, and compelling story. With 2 great performances, and a scheme of colors to make a beautiful cinematography for this film, The Quiet American truly was a shock. 

With each performance I watch of his, Michael Caine just keeps getting better and better. Oscar nom, WELL DESERVED!!!!

While I thought the editing could’ve been cleaner in a few places, and the dialogue could’ve used a little bit more detail, I thought this was a really good film.

-Please add it to your watchlist, it’s actually better then it looks-

🔙 Little Miss Sunshine  🔜 Revolutionary Road 

Review by Fint ★★★★ 19

An excellent wade through the moral murky waters of Graham Greene universe, scored atmospherically by Craig Armstrong and featuring a possibly career-best performance from Michael Caine.

Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★½

'If I lost her, for me, it would be the beginning of death..' (Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler)

More of a faithful adaptation of Graham Greene's original novel than a remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's '50's version, Phillip Noyce's exquisite 'take' has a political point of view - cautiously warning about United States intervention in a foreign conflict - but mainly focuses on relating a rattlingly good, classic movie scenario: the eternal love triangle. In particular the spotlight is on Fowler (an Oscar-nominated Caine), an archetypal Greene protagonist; ageing, weary and cynical, a man out of time whose consuming passion for his Vietnamese mistress (the very beautiful Do Thi Hai Yen) will lead him to compromise the well-being of the…

Review by Collykibber ★★★★

There are some excellent aspects; the book doesn't feel like an action story but the budget extends to a fully formed battle sequence and a brilliant suspense sequence which, in Greene's telling is there to shape the tale's tremendous ambiguity.

For Michael Caine this is the compliment to his acting that was rarely paid; the torn Englishman in a Greene novel, and he proves only what should already have been established, in his soft, destroyed reporter; the conflict of his cynicism, world worn soul and tender love; so much of which is internalised, his own ridiculous self image. The choice of Brendan Fraser as his mirror opposite, the otherworldly confidence of Pyle; the Full Metal Jacket level battle sequence entirely…

Review by Troy Gauthier ★★★

In this movie we meet Alden Pyle played by Brendan Fraser who meets Thomas Fowler who is a journalist in Sagong. Alden Pyle ends up falling in love with Fowler's love interest. But not all is what it seems between them as one isn't telling the other the whole story. Now this movie has its twists and turns but Fraser stands out. The performances are good along with the directing. I do reccomend that you watch it!!

Review by Brian Lokker ★★★★

The Quiet American is a superb adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel about French Indochina. At the center of the story are a murder mystery and a love triangle, set in the context of the last days of the French colonial war in Vietnam and the beginning of American involvement there.

The movie features an excellent, Oscar-nominated performance by Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler, an English journalist in Saigon. With his wife back in England, Fowler is enjoying life with his young Vietnamese lover, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). He spends most of his days "observing" and files few stories.

Fowler's world begins to change when the "quiet American," Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), comes to Saigon and introduces himself to…

Review by CJ Johnson ★★★★

Very strong adaptation of a tricky novel. Noyce at top of his game, as is Caine; the cinematography by Christopher Doyle is sublime. But the big happy surprise is Brendan Fraser: he’s fantastic.

Review by Max Victory ★★★

A film noir love triangle where two men's creepy efforts to possess a woman who needs their money is made into a metaphor for Vietnam, still French Indochina undergoing communist rebellion in the year this is set. Caine does a fantastic job selling this dynamic. His character is a cynical man long into decline, who wears on his face his few remaining tatters of dignity and compassion, but is still just another colonizing user. Take away the layer of British refinement (and our natural sympathies for the protagonist) and he's the same drunken, whoring, self-pitying mess that Osborne plays in a minor but well-used role.

Outside of Caine's perfect craftsmanship, the film is uneven. Some scenes are moody and well-staged,…

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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

Review of The Quiet American

Michael caine and brendan fraser star in this quietly intense romantic thriller..

3.5 out of 5 Stars, 7/10 Score

In This Article

Review of <I>The Quiet American</I>

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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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