by MATTHEW HAYS

Like Al Pacino in Insomnia and Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt, Michael Caine has been supplied with an incredible opportunity with The Quiet American. Based on the Graham Greene novel of the same name, the film allows the sexagenarian actor to fill a complex, rich, post-mid-life-crisis kind of role. It’s the kind of shot actors of that generation wish for. And as with the best Caine roles, our narrator, who voiceovers throughout, is a conflicted character who somehow manages to evoke some sympathy.

Set in ’52, the film has Caine playing a seasoned, highly respected British journalist who lives in Vietnam. He has a mistress, a woman he clearly regards as a hot little dish (while she clearly regards him as a ticket to a better life). Caine befriends Brendan Fraser, who here plays an American aid officer. Caught up in the throes of the Vietnam War (then something both the Americans and colonial French forces were involved with), initially both Caine and Fraser seem like distant observers of the war, trying to figure out the causes of it, but decidedly outside of its reaches.

No more plot points are necessary on that count, but suffice it to say nothing is really ever as it first seems, and things are moved along by Caine’s mistress, whom Fraser develops a honking crush on. This tempestuous love triangle pushes the narrative along, pointing up many of Caine’s rather unsavoury traits.

This film, along with Rabbit-Proof Fence, have marked a welcome diversion for director Phillip Noyce, who, prior to this year, had been known primarily for such functional if lightweight Hollywood fare as Clear and Present Danger, The Saint and The Bone Collector. These are definitely a higher grade of film for the filmmaker, who has said repeatedly in interviews that he’s thrilled to be making films at least somewhat removed from California’s star obsession.

While Noyce’s shift in focus must be lauded, and while this is, overall, a solid film, I must take issue with some of his directorial style. He has a certain tendency that can be likened to that of Oliver Stone (though this film is, in terms of plot, anyway, light years away from Stone’s own Vietnam odyssey, Platoon). Whenever things get nasty, whenever an action sequence must play itself out, Noyce has the annoying tendency to shift things into slo-mo. This, apparently, is supposed to indicate that things have suddenly become more serious, or life-threatening, or something like that. To me, it seems the cinematic equivalent of underlining something with truly ugly purple Jiffy marker. There must be a better way of emphasizing the action.

Still, for that minor gripe, The Quiet American is a pleasing historical film, one that points to the beginnings of one of the most gruelling colonial wars of the 20th century. History buffs, as well as Caine groupies, will swoon. :

The Quiet American opens Friday, Feb. 7

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