The Quiet American

Finally saw the much-praised 2002 film version of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, and I do recommend that anyone out there find it and see it. Unfortunately, the film suffered from being a critique of American foreign policy in the wake of September 11th (and, indeed, from being a small-budget picture). In fact, it was supposed to be released the same week in 2001 that the attacks on the Trade Centre occurred. Michael Caine is good as Fowler, the English journalist at the centre of the story, though I don't think he's as good in the role as many critics thought him. Also, the film twists Greene's novel a bit, ensuring that the film ends on an explicit identification of what eventually befell with American intervention in Vietnam, instead of doing what the novel did, which was to emphasize the individual guilt of Fowler. Greene's novel is ultimately more complex and more nuanced (to be expected), and his critique of American foreign policy was always subordinate to notions of action and inaction, and guilt and innocence. But the film, directed by Philip Noyce, is effective, even if Brendan Fraser seems a bit miscast in the title role. But especially for the politically proclamatory, the story of The Quiet American reminds all too well what happens when nothing is done, and what happens when the wrong things are done ostensibly for the 'right' reasons. The film isn't as good as it could have been, but at least it's better than the watered-down fifities film version with Sir Michael Redgrave.