In theaters

THE QUIET AMERICAN, directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan, 100 minutes, rated R. Starts tonight, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

“The Quiet American” begins in Saigon in 1952. That’s the first sign of trouble.

It’s twilight. In the foreground is a river, on which there is a clutch of boats, and in the background the city stretches low along the waterfront and glows gold. Barely visible along the horizon are missiles lighting up the summer sky as they slam into unseen targets. Like corks, they pop.

Over this surreal fizz comes the voice of Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), a British correspondent for the London Times who’s in Saigon to cover the French colonial conflict and – eventually and unwittingly – the full weight of the Vietnam War.

“I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam,” Fowler says as the bombs drop and the river sparkles. “But at night, there’s a breeze and the river is beautiful.”

That is, of course, until an ungainly young idealist from Boston, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), mysteriously is stabbed to death and thrown into the river, turning it red with his blood.

The film, from a script Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan based on Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, was directed by Phillip Noyce, a man best-known for his big-budget thrillers, such as “Clear and Present Danger,” “Patriot Games,” “The Bone Collector” and “The Saint.” Here, just as in his recent “Rabbit Proof Fence,” he’s at the top of his game, lingering on the wound in Pyle’s back before reaching back into the past to uncover how it got there.

In an extended flashback, the film chronicles how Pyle met Fowler, how the two men befriended each other over tea at the Continental Hotel, and how eventually they came to fight for the affection of Fowler’s mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), a beautiful Vietnamese taxi-dancer Fowler saved from enslavement.

Following the book, Phuong is meant to symbolize her country. She’s beautiful, sensual, slightly mysterious, slightly wild and objectified by many. Like Vietnam, men are willing to die for her – and they do.

Obviously, since no good can come from such a romantic triangle, it doesn’t.

Complicating matters is the fact that the war is heating up just as everyone’s emotions are running high. Phuong’s sister, Miss Hei (Pham Thi Mai Hoa), proves particularly troublesome since she insists that Phuong leave Fowler for Pyle, a considerably younger man who isn’t saddled with a wife in the States, as Fowler is, and who makes better money as a physician than Fowler does as a journalist.

If the utter hatred Fowler feels toward Miss Hei is one of the raw, undeniable pleasures of the movie, then the surprise Pyle springs upon us midway through comes a close second.

Unlike Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1958 adaptation of the book, Noyce, an Australian, doesn’t sugarcoat Greene’s prescient story or his suggestion that sometimes Americans aren’t always where they ought to be. Indeed, as Greene saw it, a wealth of good American intentions occasionally can lead to disastrous results, a connection to the present that undoubtedly will resonate with some as our troops gear up for the possibility of yet another war in a faraway land.

Deftly balancing its politics with its personalities, “The Quiet American” is a first-rate, human drama with real power that would have been one of 2001’s best films had Miramax released it in 2001, as originally was planned.

Still, so soon after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Miramax, fearing a political backlash because of the film’s mild anti-American undertones, decided to shelve it. It probably still would be sitting there today if Caine had not gone to Miramax himself and demanded its release.

The actor has called his performance in the movie his finest work, and indeed that might be true. What he has done in the twilight of his career is precisely what Jack Nicholson has done in the twilight of his own with his performance in “About Schmidt”: He’s played his age, allowing a vein of vulnerability to creep in as his character struggles to face the unwanted concessions that come from growing older.

Subtle and assured, his command of the screen and his economy of style never greater, Caine has scored his sixth Academy Award nomination as Fowler, and it’s well-deserved. Come March, the showdown for Best Actor will be between him, Nicholson and Adrien Brody for his work in that other cautionary tale about war, Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist.”

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.