The Ugly American (1963)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I remember first seeing "The Ugly American" upon its initial release in 1963, and I equally remember immediately linking it with what was happening in Viet Nam. I found it absorbing and timely then just as I do today. As the American ambassador with a total white hat/black hat mentality, Marlon Brando in my opinion gives one of his best performances. There's the shouting and the strutting, but there are also some very, eerily quiet, contrasting moments when he simply lets the frustration of his character all hang out. As his former best friend and now rebel leader of the fictional Sarkan to which Brando's Ambassador White has been posted, Ejii Okada is every bit Brando's equal. Their sharp exchanges are riveting, as is so much of the dialogue in this film, dialogue-heavy moments that I do not personally find boring because what they are discussing strikes me as being as important today as in 1963 when this film was first released.I do recognize that some reviewers were terribly disappointed (maybe even offended) that the film was not a recapitulation of an apparently well written, highly complex novel which I haven't read yet but intend to if I can find a copy. However, no matter how great the book, shouldn't a film be judged as a film because it is not a book? For one thing, movies don't have the luxury of an endless running time, a constraint not put upon the number of pages needed to tell a print story. Also, is not the punctuation, grammar and syntax of image quite different than that of print? Finally, as others have said, it is too bad (a) "The Ugly American" has been mostly forgotten (if it has ever been heard of) and (b) the powerful message that ends this picture is still as relevant today as it was in 1963. Indeed, if anything it is even more (very sadly) spot-on than it was then.

Naiveté and simplicity are not the hallmarks of this wonderful cinematic masterpiece, as other commentators would have you believe. Instead, this film presents a 40 year old allegory of everything that America is doing wrong today. One becomes 'gelé' as each morsel of film unrolls and presents us with chilling portents of what is to become of American foreign policy, today, in the 21st century.I find it almost disturbing that the authors and screen-writers knew -- in 1963 -- that the United States would deteriorate into the war-mongering world-wide dictatorship that it has now become. Every single element portrayed in "The Ugly American" -- from the U.S. military/industrial complex to the quest for phoney 'freedom', to the self-righteous White pitying of the starving and wretched Coloreds, to the supposed fight for 'democracy' -- has become the cause celebré of the red-state revolution, the Republican manifesto.God help us.

"The Ugly American" was released right before the Vietnam War started (depending on which stage of it), and now it seems more relevant than ever. Harrison MacWhite (Marlon Brando) becomes ambassador to the Southeast Asian nation of Sarkhan, which is on the verge of civil war between the Communists and the pro-US government. In Sarkhan, MacWhite begins to suspect that US intervention in this country might be prompting people to rebel. While he refuses to accept it, the situation becomes more and more tense, and MacWhite's officially neutral position becomes less and less sustainable.You can't say for certain what the movie's political message is, but we might take MacWhite's speech at the end as a good reminder. Either way, this is one of the many movies that showed how great an actor Marlon Brando was.

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.