Hacker Cinema
The Quiet American
2002 · Film · 101 min
Directed by Phillip Noyce
Cynical British journalist Fowler falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman but is dismayed when a naïve U.S. official also begins vying for her attention. In retaliation, Fowler informs the communists that the American is selling arms to their enemy.
3 positive1 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
I’m no spy, but I believe your description of agents has always been true. Note that, outside fiction, “intelligence agent” is distinct from “intelligence officer.” The latter is a professional spy who recruits and handles the former from among regular people who might be leveraged, paid, or ideologically keen.
Only in popularizations are the two roles confused - though I suppose there are rare circumstances in which an officer goes undercover in order to directly pilfer secrets, as opposed to recruiting someone who can. Hard and rare one expects: language, culture and competent counter-intel have made recruiting someone already inside easier and wiser.
Also I don’t think competent professional spies have ever used “movie inspired” anything, but the generous interpretation of your comment assumes you meant the reverse.
But still a poor assumption to think the fiction ever got it right, starting with the confusion over what an “agent” is but including everything else.
Excepting Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” and “The Quiet American,” which I suspect nailed the respective damnfool incompetence and arrogant ignorance of a certain type of mid-century patriot keenly. “Harlot’s Ghost,” though mystical, may also speak bizarro truth.
Made into a good movie. Brendan Fraser (surprisingly?) very good. His best role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_American_(2002_film)
Always throws me off when I see his name because I first think of the actor rather than the author!
The part about being prophetic about the Cuban Missile Crisis was interesting, and I think I'll add The Quiet American to my reading list:
[Greene's] previous full-length novel, The Quiet American (1955), anticipated tragic US military entanglement in Vietnam a decade later. Meanwhile, his Havana-based story would prove remarkably prophetic about another key Cold War episode. Using an Atomic Pile vacuum cleaner as a model, the charlatan Secret Service agent fools his bungling bosses in London with sketches of ‘big military installations under construction’ in the mountains of eastern Cuba, including a ‘large concrete platform’ and ‘strange machinery in transport’.
Two reasons:
1) I am a knowledge-whore. I like to think that after doing something for a substantial time, I will come out of it having learned something. I would consider film culturally enriching, mostly because I watch fringe, independent or foreign films; For some reason, I have a very high opinion of filmmakers as artists. However, I can't say the same about video games or their artistic or cultural merit. I am unable to consider them substantial in that regard.
2) I like to share and talk about my experiences. I can talk about movies, I can recommend albums, I will even take the time to scribble directions and notes on someone's pristine travel book and tell them where to go. But I can't do the same with video games. There is no particular instance that I can think about and reference later; either because the games are dynamically generated, or because the gamer demographic are just not the people that I tend to socialize with, so I don't identify with them.
Bonus:
3) I like realism. Along with video games, I don't tolerate Anime, Fantasy Fiction, or any other type of "geek" entertainment. I was offered two DVDs by my neighbor; The Dark Knight and The Quiet American; I took the later. Hard to explain, really.
P.S. I am a hopeless Soduku addict and play 30 minutes when I wake up in the morning, and 30 minutes before I go to bed. In fact, that's what I use my phone for 90% of the time.