Quiet American, The

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Star Michael Caine, who gives one of the great, inescapably moving performances in a career filled with them, based his character on personal impressions of the late author. And Greene's lifelong concern with moral ambiguity gives this film a texture and complexity that movies don't usually achieve.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The narrative is lean, the supporting performances are solid, and, perhaps most crucially, the emotional tone of the piece is spot-on.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

An instant classic and a dramatic beauty, a film that gets us to the core of Greene's chilly, dark and romantic view of the post-war world.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This thoroughly modern movie pulls off a classical feat. It elicits the searing combination of pity and terror that leaves a viewer feeling purged.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is a film with a political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in their fascination with each other and with the girl.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film reveals itself to be not so much a historical allegory as an Iliad of the heart. It's sad and smart and beautiful and true.

Newsweek David Ansen

Far from being a period piece, this love story/murder mystery/political thriller couldn’t seem more timely.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Noyce's movie pares away the novel's meditations on the futility of war and the importance of religion. It retains the book's thoughtful blending of psychological and moral issues.

Time Richard Corliss

As thoughtful as it is handsomely acted. Caine's subtle, bold performance should guarantee him an aisle seat on Oscar night.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film's real feat may be in its production design, in the sumptuousness and veracity with which it re-creates central Saigon and the Vietnamese countryside of the '50s: an exotic lost world of brothels and opium dens, trishaws and ao-dai dresses, Ming-deco interiors and water buffalos in rice paddies.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Noyce's movie works because the director -- trusts himself, and his audience, to understand that catastrophe isn't always a matter of loud ideology. Rather, it's the result of age-old human weakness. And sometimes it's quiet.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

I cannot remember a major movie, not even "The Godfather," that forced me to peer so intently into the gloom. [2 December 2002, p. 87]

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Beautifully directed by Phillip Noyce, the film -- is a full experience, a love story and a murder mystery that expands into a meditation on the deep deceptions of innocence.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Caine has already been cited as a likely Oscar nominee for his performance, which is clearly one of the most nuanced to date from this first-rate actor, and Fraser is funny and effective as a foil to the old pro.

Slate David Edelstein

Caine makes Hampton's too-literary narration work by playing it as an inner dialogue: It's the best performance of narration I've ever heard. It makes you want to hear Caine read the whole book--or read anything.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Noyce takes a great deal of care with this adaptation. For one thing, he includes as much of Greene's potent shorthand as he can without weighing the movie down.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Ever since the movie made a brief appearance late last year to qualify for Oscar consideration, Mr. Caine's performance has been hailed as the best of his career, and surely that's true.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Fowler may be the richest character of Mr. Caine's screen career. Slipping into his skin with an effortless grace, this great English actor gives a performance of astonishing understatement whose tone wavers delicately between irony and sadness.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Thanks to Caine's subtly nuanced performance, there's a deeper dimension to everything. He's snappily ironic at times, sometimes amazingly delicate, always engaging.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

In so many ways, The Quiet American speaks volumes.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The key to why the new ''American'' is so good and so true, though, is Brendan Fraser as the title character.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A film full of a sense of impending danger, betrayal, seduction and destruction. Quite simply, it's great stuff.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

Unsettling, morally complex and timely view of American power abroad. Many will find it courageous and some, no doubt, will absolutely revile it, but no one is likely to look away from the screen.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Even as The Quiet American loses focus and urgency, Caine's performance keeps the doomed spirit of Greene's hero intact.

Variety Todd McCarthy

One of Caine's meatiest roles, and he handles it with power, humanity and remarkable emotional fluidity; from the opening moments, an enormous amount comes through his eyes alone.

Film Threat Tim Merrill

As a piece of acting, The Quiet American represents a fitting capper to Caine’s illustrious career; his portrait of a jaded sybarite whom history nudges into conscientious action is among the year’s most moving.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The second version of Graham Greene's sad and prescient 1955 novel about American involvement in Vietnam hews far closer to the book than the first, preserving the sophisticated ambiguity of his depiction of a tangled struggle for power played out on both personal and political fronts.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is intelligent grown-up entertainment on both a political and a humanistic level.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A smart and literate effort with a few weaknesses.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The acting, especially by the male leads, is superlative.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Caine has never been better, which is saying something. He puts a human face on a tragic era of history in a film that ranks with the year's finest.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Greene's words haunt us like a prophecy from half a century and half a world away.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Vibrant and intriguing, a fine adaptation despite the slight departures from its source, with warm cinematography that captures the feel of '50s Saigon and two performances worthy of Oscar attention.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

In short, this new Quiet American is not only true to Greene's novel -- it has the effect of making the novel itself seem truer than it has ever been.

LA Weekly John Patterson

Noyce has made a good-looking, intelligent stab at the novel, mildly undermined by a tendency to seek contemporary relevance.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result is a rarity on the modern screen -- a film with more brains than heart.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

It's a shame that, on top of everything else, the second movie version of The Quiet American -- Graham Greene's brilliant 1955 novel about the French Indochina war -- should be so visually disappointing.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The movie adds nothing to the political dialogue, and the love story is mood-killingly sad. The lure of the exotic can be deceptive, it says. The moody, murky atmosphere leaves nothing clear except that mixed intentions will always yield mixed results.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

As is frequently the case when there is public fuss about a film or play, the work itself is not very good.