The one frequently recurring character in Graham Greene’s oeuvre is that of an Englishman, or a mixture thereof, who has become quietly accustomed to his adopted surroundings: usually somewhere off in the far-flung regions of the third world. At odds with the Home Office, frequently stymied by the bullying tactics of the Americans, Greene’s man-in-country—a human metaphor for post-colonial residualism—attempts to survive, to do some good: simply to live in peace and experience the beauties of his surroundings reflected in the exquisite features of his lover’s face. But things usually turn out not to be that simple.
The year is 1952 and the French colonial invaders are losing their grip on their Indo-Chinese possession. All of this is easy grist for Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), a reporter for the Times of London who has found a comfortable niche for himself in Saigon. Perhaps regarded as a bit too long in the tooth to be effectual in the field any longer, the Home Office wants Fowler to return home to become foreign editor. But Fowler has neither the desire to return to the filthy weather of London, nor to his estranged wife. He has his work, such as it is. And he has Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), a lovely young woman and the daughter of a professor whose impoverishment has compelled her to work as a dance hall girl. Watched over by a conniving older sister who is desperately trying to arrange a marriage for her sibling with an eligible foreigner, Phuong, having been in the company, so to speak, of non-native men, is now considered damaged goods. She is unmarriageable in her own country. Fowler is in love with her, but his own wife will simply never allow him a divorce.
Enter the Americans. With the French failure to stem the rise of Communist insurgency in the North, the Yanks are now filtering into the country. In a humanitarian gesture a team of medical experts has been dispatched to Saigon, bringing with them Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), an expert on a particularly nasty eye affliction called trachoma. Pyle easily ingratiates himself with the other European ex-patriots, making Fowler suspect this charmer is in fact working as an American spy. Events begin to complicate themselves further one evening at dinner with colleagues when Pyle is introduced to Phuong and her sister (Pham Thi Mai Hoa), the latter seeing in Pyle the marriageable Westerner for Phuong that Fowler is not.
To reinforce his request to the Times to allow him to stay in the country for a while longer, Fowler concocts a need to visit the front lines of the war up North. Accompanying a platoon of Foreign Legion soldiers, Fowler experiences first hand the atrocities at Phat Diem that have been attributed to the Communists. But he knows full well that this brutality can be laid squarely at the feet of one General Thé, a quisling insurgent supported, secretly, by the meddlesome Americans. The true story of Indo-China, as Fowler certainly knows, is that it will shortly become a battleground to stem the tide of the so-called “domino effect,” whereby Communism encircles the entirety of Southeast Asia.
Reenter Pyle, who, despite a harrowing trip up river in a purchased punt, has nevertheless come to Phat Diem for the express purpose of announcing to Fowler—quite unexpectedly—that he has fallen in love with Phuong.
It is nice to see Brendan Fraser taking a breather from his quest to succeed Leslie Nielsen as slapstick-laureate. Though there was little heavy lifting in the role of Pyle (even the serviceable Audie Murphy—no pun intended—was able to pull off this role in the first hashing of this story in 1958), this role might have been better cast with someone with a bit more studied malevolence, say, like Alec Baldwin or Michael Keaton. (Tom Hanks would have been a godsend: delivering a box office heads-up this film truly deserves). But for sheer studied brilliance, for a screen-acting master’s class we have—as I hope we will continue to have for years to come—Michael Caine. Though he has scant command of anything other than his own cockney mannerisms (he is certainly not an amorphous actor the way that Robert Duval, Meryl Streep, and Vincent D’Onfrio are) Caine’s simple, believably human portrayal is unrivaled—in this chair filler’s opinion—by anyone else working today.
With masterful simplicity, screenwriters Christopher Hampton and Robert Shenkkan have parsed Graham Greene’s languid novel into a minimalist love story that functions wonderfully as a metaphorical tug-of-war between Western powers for the affections of a beautiful yet fragile jewel of the Orient. The remainder of this sad story we all know so very well. Director Philip Noyce moves us through the streets of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) as if through a cloud of opium smoke. Filmed on location, we experience the sounds and textures that Fowler grew to love as much as his precious Phuong.
Graham Greene was briefly a member of the Communist party in his student days. As a consequence his point of view, voiced through Fowler’s first person narration, was frequently interpreted as being in sympathy with Ho Chi Minh’s attempt at national collectivism. That is a simplistic view; as we now know there was absolutely nothing subtle about Viet Nam. The only thing that is known for a fact was the ham-handed approach the Western powers took toward an insular society that wanted nothing more than to be left the hell alone to their own fate. “At some point…” Fowler’s assistant and Communist partisan says to him, “…you have to chose sides.” And after a particularly horrific episode that destroys any professional and emotional objectivity that Fowler might have harbored he decides to make that choice. As much as he fought becoming engagé in the internal strife of a struggling country, this is exactly what motivates him in the end. This is a condition, this "choosing of sides” no doubt Greene would have agreed, we are all in danger of experiencing as long as we continue to call ourselves human.
Set during the Vietnam War, a young Vietnamese woman must choose between an opium-addicted British reporter and an American CIA agent.More at HotMovieSale.com
The acclaimed performances of two-time Academy Award winner Michael Caine (Best Supporting Actor, The Cider House Rules, 1999; Hannah And Her Sisters,...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.