Movie Review: The Quiet American

The Quiet American: Torgo approves

We've watched a lot of movies lately.

I read this Graham Greene book a year or two ago. Sometimes when I read old books where I know a movie has recently come out and I know the actors in it, it's hard for me not to picture the actors and see the book as a movie. Fortunately, Michael Caine seems perfectly cast, as does Brendan Fraser.

Caine is excellent as the older British reporter in early 1950's Vietnam, relying on his young Vietnamese mistress, jaded by the French v. Communist fighting. Fraser plays the seemingly simplistic American, moving in on Caine's girl and challenging his reluctance to take sides.

It's a love triangle, first of all, a murder mystery, next, then a political statement about how the Americans got involved.

This is how I used to think stories were supposed to be written, back when I thought there was a model to follow. Main plot, subplot, subplot, all interconnected and dependent on each other for resolution. It's simple in theory, complex in reality.

The Vietnamese girl, Phuong, needs to be interesting for the story to work. She is, though she's a bit wooden. She wants out of Vietnam, her sister pushed her towards the American, she's seen too many Vietnamese girls with French boyfriends who leave them at the airport. The American is just a means to her desired ends. That's good. I'm glad they didn't have her be in love with Fraser.

Her love for Caine's character is unexplained and difficult to comprehend, but fortunately the subplots subsume that story.

There aren't enough stories about how America first got involved, showing why the French left and why it unwinnable from the start. Of course, the relevance to Iraq is there, though it wasn't when the movie was made. Even without Iraq, it's a good message told in a nicely layered story.