Page 3 of 3
THE QUIET AMERICAN With apologies to Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis, it's fellow Oscar nominee Michael Caine who deserves the Best Actor trophy for delivering not only the finest male performance of 2002 but also one of the best of his entire career. In this adaptation of a Graham Greene novel whose ideas seem perpetually topical, Caine stars as Thomas Fowler, a London Times journalist stationed in Saigon in the 1950s. His strong relationship with a gorgeous Vietnamese woman (Do Thi Hai Yen) encounters some unexpected turbulence with the arrival of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), an idealistic American who makes no bones about the fact that he's fallen in love with Fowler's woman. Director Phillip Noyce, who was two-for-two in 2002 (having also helmed Rabbit-Proof Fence), has crafted a smart piece of entertainment that works well on both the personal and political fronts, placing a complex love triangle at the center of a sobering dissertation that boldly questions the US's continuous policy of meddling in foreign affairs. Fraser provides his character with a superficial sheen that pays off as the movie progresses, yet it's Caine's towering work, as a man who might not be as cynical as he thinks, that gives this movie its booming voice.
SHANGHAI KNIGHTS If you're gonna insist on making a formulaic sequel to a formulaic comedy, then this might be the way to go, by overstuffing it with so much nonsensical material that some of it is bound to charm through sheer willpower. Its 2000 predecessor, Shanghai Noon, ranked as one of the weaker "odd couple" comedies of late, with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson going through the paces in a dull action romp set in the Old West. Knights is an improvement, with Chan and Wilson heading to London to solve the murder of Chan's character's father. The villains are uninteresting and the central plot thread is dopey, but it's what's around the edges that makes this painless entertainment. Writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar find clever ways to incorporate historical figures into their storyline (best of all is the use of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, winningly played here by Thomas Fisher), and they also pay tribute to practically every notable screen comedian this side of Cheech and Chong (Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and the Hope-Crosby team are among those honored). The anachronisms make Oliver Stone's dramas seem like cinema verite documentaries by comparison, yet it's a perverse pleasure to hear The Who's "My Generation" and "Magic Bus" in a film that's set in 1887. 1/2