The Quiet American

The Quiet American is a 2002 political drama film and the adaptation of Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel set in Vietnam, The Quiet American. It is directed by Phillip Noyce and stars Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Do Thi Hai Yen. The 2002 version of The Quiet American, in contrast to the 1958 film version, depicted Greene's original ending and treatment of the principal American character, Pyle. Like the novel, the film illustrates Pyle's moral culpability in arranging terrorist actions aimed at the French colonial government and the Viet Minh. Going beyond Greene's original work, the film used a montage ending with superimposed images of American soldiers from the intervening decades of the Vietnam War. Miramax paid $5.5 million for the rights to distribute the film in North America and some other territories, but it shelved the film for a year due to the September 11 attacks and the film's "unpatriotic" message. The film finally received an Oscar qualification release in November 2002 and went on to gross US$12.9 million in limited theatrical release in the United States. The film received positive reviews from critics and Caine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Plot The story is set in 1952 in Saigon, Vietnam (French Indochina at that time), toward the end of the First Indochina War (1946–1954) in which French forces fought the Communist-led Viet Minh rebels. On one level, The Quiet American is a love story about the triangle that develops between Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in his fifties; Alden Pyle, a young American idealist, supposedly an aid worker; and Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman. On another level it is also about the growing American involvement that led to the full-scale American war in Vietnam.