TALK ABOUT MOVIES

2004 Talk About Movies
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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

TALK ABOUT MOVIES
July/August 2004

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Directed by Philip Noyce. Starring Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Thi Hai Yen. 2002, 101 minutes, Color, USA/Germany/Australia, English/French/Vietnamese. Available at Hollywood Video.

Ernie: Fowler has the Catholic wife at home, and it messes up all his plans for himself.

Matthew: It gives a moral absolute that he can't do anything about.

Ernie: And forgetting about it starts his moral decay. A hint of that is when his wife writes, "You always did pick up women like you picked up mud on your shoes."

Matthew: So he goes to Saigon and becomes morally numb -- a journalist who won't take sides in a conflict, a lover who can't marry his girl.

Ernie: Then Pyle comes along and ruins Fowler's little fantasyland. For starters, he's changing Vietnam, and it starts to make everything hit closer to home -- most of all, in the café bombing. Then he goes after Fowler's girl.

Matthew: Fowler becomes morally animated again, but it's a political morality. He starts asking questions about the massacre at Phat Diem. He listens to his secretary, who says, "Sooner or later, one has to take sides."

Ernie: But it's at least partly for personal reasons. He wants his girl back.

Matthew: And that political morality eventually makes him a more perfect wretch, when he turns on Pyle, the man who saved his life.

Ernie: And the first thing he does after Pyle is murdered is to go back to the girl to reclaim her.