the quiet american

Director: phillip noyce

Actor: michael caine,brendan fraser,thi hai yen do,rade serbedzija

Data Published: Fri Nov 29 2002

Genres: Drama,Romance,Thriller,War

Key Words: year 1952,first indochina war,french indochina,asia,french colonial empire

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258068/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_American_(2002_film)

Description: The Quiet American is a movie starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Thi Hai Yen Do. An old British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman.

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; a young American idealist, supposedly an aid worker, named Alden Pyle; and Phuong, a Vietnamese woman. On another level it is also about the growing American involvement that led to the full-scale American war in Vietnam. Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), who narrates the story, is involved in the war only as a reporter, an unengaged observer, apart from one crucial event. Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who represents America and its policies in Vietnam, is a CIA operative sent to steer the war according to America’s interests, and is passionately devoted to the ideas of York Harding, an American foreign policy theorist who said that what Vietnam needed was a "third force" to take the place of both the colonialists and the Vietnamese rebels and restore order. Pyle sets about creating a "Third Force" against the French and the Viet Minh by using a Vietnamese splinter group headed by corrupt militia leader General Thé (based on the actual Trinh Minh The). His arming of Thé's militia with American weaponry leads to a series of terrorist bombings in Saigon. These bombings, dishonestly blamed on the Communists in order to further American outrage, kill a number of innocent people, including women and children. Meanwhile, Pyle has taken Fowler's Vietnamese mistress Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), promising her marriage and security. When Fowler finds out about Pyle's involvement in the bombings, he takes one definitive action to seal all of their fates. He indirectly agrees to let his assistant, Hinh (Tzi Ma), and Hinh's Communist cohorts confront Pyle; when Pyle tries to flee, Hinh fatally stabs him. Phuong subsequently returns to Fowler, and while the local French police commander (Rade Šerbedžija) suspects Fowler's role in Pyle's murder, he has no evidence and does not pursue the matter.