The Quiet American (Phillip Noyce) is a political thriller intertwined with a romantic drama, the two blend surprisingly well in this well crafted film. Based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, it deals with Vietnam prior to the U.S conflict, which is uncommon.
The Quiet American evolves around Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), a British journalist covering the French – Communist conflict in the early 1950’s. Despite the conflict Fowler leads a sheltered lifestyle with his young Vietnamese lover, Phuang (Do Thi Hai Yen) in Saigon. However his pleasant life begins to fracture with the arrival of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who also falls for Phuang he also has links to a third warring party, and other politcal ambitions, this all leads to Fowlers uncovering of U.S. Involvement in the conflict.
The film is well made, the shots help create a sense of tone, and using lots of vibrant lighting in the early parts of the film help to create a strange sense of stability and serenity despite the conflict, this perfectly matches Fowler’s mood and mindset in this portion of the film, the shots slowly darken until the final act which takes place at night. For all this quality in shot choice, none of it would have been as effective without the excellent score, well timed, and used with high accuracy in terms of making a scene feel more tense, or more lighthearted.
Michael Caine adds another stellar performance to his list, he gives the lead character a real sense of grey area, which adds complexity and depth to the character of Thomas Fowler, which in turn adds to the film. Brendan Fraser, whilst not bad, was continually overshadowed by Caine, thankfully this is not detrimental to the film at all.
For all the films qualities the Blu-ray release does very little, the transfer is, at times, grainy, which is not what one would expect from a Blu-ray. The bonus features are pretty standard, they include; commentary, interviews, B-rolls, an original featurette, and ‘Anatomy of a scene’ which has a ‘making of” feel to it.
Overall the film is of high quality and is definitely worth a watch, but it might be worth saving the pennies and getting it on DVD instead of splashing on a Blu-ray version.
The Quiet American is available on Blu-Ray from September 19th 2011.
