Entertaining picture dealing with a central romance along with thrills , political details and warlike deeds about Vietnam war . A young naive American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) and a cynical older British journalist called Fowler (Michael Caine) disagree over politics in 1952 Vietnam and over a beautiful young native girl called Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) . As a ¨quiet American¨ with dark secrets arrives in Saigon with his own plan to settle country's conflicts . As it's not clear whether Alden Pyle is just what he appears , as he seems to be an innocent Young American opposite the older, cynical Brit Thomas Fowler . Eventually Fowler must confront moral conflicts and the relationship between Pyle and him reaches some problems connected with a Vietnamese General , at the same time the war and a political upheaval take place .
Interesting second rendition of the Graham Greene novel including a love triangle , emotion , wartime events and many other things . The picture relies heavily on the love triangle between the ironical British reporter , his enticing mistress and the strange quiet American , but it doesn't boring , neither tiring and nor dull . Michael Caine is good as a correspondent covering a conflict and finding himself becoming personally involved when he befriends an American who is not all that he seems to and also falling for a beautiful young Vietnamese , a mesmerizing Do Thi Hai . The movie has its touching moments found primarily in the superb performances from trio protagonist . The film ends with newspaper stories written by Thomas Fowler about Vietnam from 1954 to 1966. However the book on which the film was based was published in 1955, so these are mostly events which happened after the book came out . The US release of this movie was delayed for more than a year by the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001. The producers were concerned that it would be seen as anti-American.
Miramax had paid $5.5 million for the rights to distribute the movie in North America and some other territories, but then shelved it for a long time. Miramax even planned to send this movie to go straight-to-video. But Michael Caine successfully persuaded Miramax to screen this movie at 2002 Toronto International Film Festival; the movie received many good reviews at the Film Festival, so Miramax decided to release this movie in the United States theatrically . This handsomely mounted flick was well directed by Phillip Noyce , a successful Australian director who filmed Dead Calm (1989), starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane , it brought Noyce to Hollywood, where he directed 6 films over the next decade, including Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and present danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford, and The bone collector (1999), starring Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.
The first version with a very good cast such as Audie Murphy as the American , Michael Redgrave as Thomas Fowler , Claude Dauphin as Inspector Vigot , Giorgia Moll as Phuong Bruce Cabot as Bill Granger resulted to be more a killing mystery than the political/drama intented , while this last retelling turned to be more faithful to Graham Greene than Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 take on . In fact , in Europe, director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz was savagely attacked for his film's infidelity to the source novel by Graham Greene, not least by Greene himself. The screenplay essentially turns the novel inside-out, so that the blundering "quiet American", whose extreme naiveté causes tragedies .
