Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for The Quiet American
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
2002 · FILM

The Quiet American

British journalist Thomas Fowler must protect his lover and prevent a naive U.S. operative from igniting a deadly war in war‑torn Vietnam, risking both his heart and the fragile peace.

“In war, the most powerful weapon is seduction.”

Directed by
Phillip Noyce
Written by
Graham Greene, Christopher Hampton
Runtime
101 min
DramaRomanceThriller

Synopsis

A cynical British journalist named Fowler becomes enamored with a young Vietnamese woman, only to be troubled when a naïve U.S. official also starts pursuing her. In response, Fowler alerts the communists that the American is supplying weapons to their enemy.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 24

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by John ScottShot by Christopher DoyleScored by Craig ArmstrongDesigned by Roger Ford

Box Office

2002 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$27.7M

Budget$30.0M
Worldwide gross$27.7M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $13.0M — 47% of worldwide · International: $14.7M (53%)

Opening weekend: $102K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $160K — 1% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 6 theaters

Also known as

  • Der stille Amerikanerde
  • Un Américain bien tranquillefr

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating. Sign in to add what you know.