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Director Phillip Noyce is perhaps best known for his film adaptations of two Tom Clancy novels: Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. This past year, however, Noyce released two films that earned him greater respect amongst film critics. These films do not have the flash and dazzle of box office hits; there is no Jack Ryan to save the day in either piece. But they do offer compelling, unique, and memorable stories that will have viewers talking about them for a long time after leaving the theatre.

Both films involve the damage done when trying to shape the futures of lives one does not understand. One offers the tension of pre-war Vietnam, where a British journalist and an American official argue over who can offer a better life for a beautiful Vietnamese woman. The other takes us on a breathtaking adventure through sun-scorched Australia as Aborigine children try to escape presumptuous English bureaucrats.

Actor Michael Caine (Hannah and Her Sisters, The Cider House Rules) gives what I believe is his most accomplished screen performance in Noyce's adaptation of the 1955 Graham Greene novelThe Quiet American. Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist living in Vietnam in the early '50s. Fowler is cocky and cool, even lazy, savoring the exotic sights and sounds of his new home and relaxing in the company of Phuong, his beautiful young Vietnamese girlfriend (Do Thi Hai Yen). In his arrogance and self-absorption, Fowler avoids thinking about the wife he is neglecting back home in London, but her Catholic convictions haunt him. He stifles his conscience on the matter, just as he treats his responsibilities as a journalist lightly. When another man arrives and makes a convincing case that he is the better suitor for Phuong, Fowler is shaken out of his complacency and realizes how lost he has become.

His challenger is Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), an American who is enthusiastic about bringing aid to the Vietnamese. (In a 1958 film version, Audie Murphy played the American, while Sir Michael Redgrave portrayed Fowler.) This handsome charismatic bachelor quickly catches Phuong's eye. Soon, Fowler and Pyle are comparing themselves in a debate over who deserves her affections and who can offer her a better future. But their differences of opinion run deeper than that, differences brought to light as they infiltrate a violent anti-Communist resistance and develop relationships with a dangerous warlord

As we learn more and more about Fowler and Pyle, they become living metaphors of the way their two respective homelands—Britain and the U.S.—dealt with Indochina in the '50s and '60s. The British behaved with indifference to the internal conflicts intensifying in Vietnam, while Americans moved in with good intentions and became entangled in a messy, deadly war. It is startling to watch the story unfold if one keeps in mind that Graham Greene wrote this novel before the Vietnam War; the ominous tones of prophecy underlie several heated conversations. Noyce is well aware of this, and he concludes his film with headlines that lead us beyond the last page of Greene's book to the late 1960s and the events that verified many of the author's premonitions.

Just as Greene's book was relevant to his time and place, Noyce's movie is timely—too timely, in fact. It was slated for release in late 2001, but Miramax bigwigs decided that the story, which dares to question American foreign policy, was inappropriate for audiences in the wake of the terrorist attacks on America. They shelved it for more than a year. This was both ill-advised and unfortunate. What better time to get Americans thinking and talking about wise foreign policy than now? What better occasion to inspire conversations about the proper response to growing threats and the wisdom of exercising caution and restraint?

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January (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47