"THE QUIET AMERICAN"

Caine is ably supported by Brendan Fraser, as Alden Pyle, whom Fowler calls the "quiet American"—a mystery-man idealist who thinks his approach will solve all the problems and bring Vietnam under the rule of the "appropriate" regime.

It’s 1952 in Saigon and Fowler’s cushy one-story-a-month job is about to get dangerous. He has a wife at home who won’t divorce him and a pretty young mistress—a former taxi dancer who longs for London life with Fowler, or maybe a better life anywhere with anybody. We never find out.

Life is the way Fowler wants it—no view, no action and no involvement—until he meets up with Pyle. He’s too old in mind and body to remember when he wanted to accomplish something in life. In one of the many subtle humorous anecdotes, Pyle asks Fowler if he likes London and the reporter replies, "Yes, I like London right where it is and I don’t want to go there."

Pyle’s entrance will complicate things. Supposedly, he is there on a humanitarian mission to render medical aid and technology on behalf of some American Economic Mission. Sure he is, and Communism believes in freedom.

It doesn’t take Fowler long to discover Pyle’s real purpose.

First, Pyle trails Fowler up North to Phat Diem, where the reporter is checking out a massacre. Some would-be liberator, General The’, is tearing up the countryside and giving the French occupational forces fits and blaming it on the communists.

Cute. Fowler will later find out that The’ is backed by the CIA and that Pyle has masterminded the whole plot to pave the way for an American-backed "Third Force". It’s the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" routine.

And then there is Phuong, Fowler’s beautiful young mistress with a longing to be somewhere else, anywhere else and out of the clutches of her mercenary sister.

One look at her and Pyle is hooked. That is the brief weak spot in the story and probably the curse that left Fraser without a nomination for anything. In war, he is a clever conniver, but in love he is a sniveling wimp and a hopeless romantic who can hardly speak. That is too hard to believe.

Fowler, who can see the mutual attraction between Pyle and Phuong from the very beginning, plays the game of manners and honor in most noble fashion until he looks in the mirror one day and realizes that he is about to lose Phuong, the only thing in life that matters to him now.

Fireworks—and nobody displays fireworks like Michael Caine once the boiling point is reached. This polite, very English gentleman can level everyone in a room when his feathers are sufficiently ruffled. It is a site to behold and, no doubt, one of the scenes that tipped the scales toward his Oscar nomination.

"The Quiet American" is a remake of the 1958 effort, which starred Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave. That one is the baby food version, virtually stripped of the "un-American" sentiment contained in Greene’s superb novel. It is more of a murder mystery than the political thriller embodied in the book.

This remake pulls no punches about the early manipulations that eventually sent more than 56,000 American men and women to their deaths in Vietnam.

Be aware. Fowler is no hero. No one ever did a better job of hiding behind a typewriter. Turns out that he is even capable of lying to achieve his purpose. To lose Phuong would be "the beginning of death" for him.

He is a typical Graham Greene character, able to wax eloquent while struggling internally with the moral issues of the day. A philosopher he is, as in "sooner or later, one has to take sides if one is to remain human." Cool and calculated he is, as in "There’s a war on—people are dying every day" and "In a war, you use the tools you’ve got".