Years ago, I loved reading "The Ugly American," so when I saw this film at the video store, I had high hopes. Unfortunately there is little similar between Lederer and Burdick's work and this cinematic dreck.
The book is a story of the complexity of diplomacy, and of the multiple ways some people get it right and some people get it wrong, set it a fictional Indo-Chinese country.
The total sum of the movie's attempt to represent complexity are people with different opinions about the state of affairs in the country. And in the end we find out exactly how they were all along. This is not complexity, this is not the ambiguity present in the wonderful book. The screenwriters have taken a plot about fundamental errors in approach, empathy, and understanding, and made it into a movie about people who have minor disagreements on the facts (and eventually are shown the 'correct' interpretation).
The book follows a multitude of characters. The movie follows one character, a very hammy Brando, and barely even references anybody else as being significant.
The ugly engineer from the book has a total of about 5 minutes screenplay in the movie! The sleazy, foolish newspaper man the same! These were CRITICAL and CRUCIAL characters in the book, and they are given barely a mention in the movie! The title of the book/movie was in part referring to these characters as well! It is a bad sign when a movie practically eliminates the title characters from the book it is based on.
The book was a tremendous statement about the difficulties of diplomacy and the errors made in Indo-China just before the outbreak of the Vietnam war. The movie is an hour and a half of barely watchable crap. This is perhaps one of Brando's worst performances -- he is practically a parody of himself with eyebrow raised, head titled musings and statements about the lessons his characters learns.
The book was complicated, subtle, and had incredible depth. The movie is simple, base, and shallow. If you liked the book, you'll hate it. If you haven't read the book, you'll still get nothing out of it. There are far too many better films out there on this topic to waste time with this one.
The book is a story of the complexity of diplomacy, and of the multiple ways some people get it right and some people get it wrong, set it a fictional Indo-Chinese country.
The total sum of the movie's attempt to represent complexity are people with different opinions about the state of affairs in the country. And in the end we find out exactly how they were all along. This is not complexity, this is not the ambiguity present in the wonderful book. The screenwriters have taken a plot about fundamental errors in approach, empathy, and understanding, and made it into a movie about people who have minor disagreements on the facts (and eventually are shown the 'correct' interpretation).
The book follows a multitude of characters. The movie follows one character, a very hammy Brando, and barely even references anybody else as being significant.
The ugly engineer from the book has a total of about 5 minutes screenplay in the movie! The sleazy, foolish newspaper man the same! These were CRITICAL and CRUCIAL characters in the book, and they are given barely a mention in the movie! The title of the book/movie was in part referring to these characters as well! It is a bad sign when a movie practically eliminates the title characters from the book it is based on.
The book was a tremendous statement about the difficulties of diplomacy and the errors made in Indo-China just before the outbreak of the Vietnam war. The movie is an hour and a half of barely watchable crap. This is perhaps one of Brando's worst performances -- he is practically a parody of himself with eyebrow raised, head titled musings and statements about the lessons his characters learns.
The book was complicated, subtle, and had incredible depth. The movie is simple, base, and shallow. If you liked the book, you'll hate it. If you haven't read the book, you'll still get nothing out of it. There are far too many better films out there on this topic to waste time with this one.