Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

I was looking on NetFlix to see what movies directed by Stephen Frears they had that I hadn't seen. Frears, whose current release is "The Queen" with Helen Mirren, has made interesting films in a variety of genres, mostly character-centered rather than plot-centered. I liked his little-known gangster/revenge movie "The Hit," and his better-known movies such as Dangerous Liaisons, My Beautiful Laundrette, Dirty Pretty Thing, High Fidelity...

I was intrigued that there was an early one (1983) starring Judi Dench (the only movie in which I've seen her that dates from before 1983 is a minor part in Luther; Frears directed her to a best actress Oscar nomination last year in "Mrs. Henderson Presents") and E. G. Marshall (my role model on tv in the early 1960s in his Emmy-winning role in "The Defenders," and whom I just saw in Interiors). The screenplay was by acclaimed British playwright David Hare (whose one-man show Via Dolorosa I recently saw and who won an Oscar for the screenplay he adapted of The Hours). I was also interested that it was set in Saigon in 1975, just before the fall of the Thieu government and the US Embassy rooftop evacuation. (I am well aware of differences between Iraq and Viet Nam, though more aware of similarities than Bush, Rumsfeld, et al. seem to be.)

Frears, Hare, Dench, and Marshall: that's a lot of talent. But there was the warning that those who had rated it on NetFlix had given it an average rating of 2.5 (out of 5). Alas, I think they overrated the movie. And the major problem is the younger Judi Dench and/or her role as Barbara Dean. She was not a star except on the London stage at that time, but her performance through the first 3/4ths of the movie seemed phoned-in. Barbara Dean is a poised employee, who plays bridge with a top South Vietnamese foreign affairs minister at a club that was once a French colonial respite place. She exudes sympathy for her Vietnamese boss and one of her underlings.

And she falls into the open arms of a CIA analyst named Bob Chesneau (played by Frederic Forrest (who was Oscar nominated in "The Rose," and played the title role in Wim Wender's disastrous "Hammett" and the lead in FF Coppola's disastrous "One from the Heart"). There is no chemistry between them and no romantic development in a movie that is way-too-much focused on a white-skinned romance in a dark-skinned country. Viewers (I'm sure not just me) have no reason to be interested in the "romance," which seems more like casual sex than "passion." And what is going on in the background is very interesting. Had they only dissolved the foreground to focus on what is treated as background for the romance!

The US Ambassador, played by E. G. Marshall, is back in the US as the situation for the South Vietnamese puppet government is deteriorating. Bob is concerned about evacuating those who have helped him and "the agency." He puts the case forcefully, but the Ambassador will not hear of it. Evacuating those who had been informants for the CIA would "send a bad signal" about American resolve (of which there was in reality none). There is no course other than hoping for a miracle, but the Ambassador insists on staying it. Standing firm is a "test of character." (At least he is consistent in refusing to get down with the nearby presidential palace is bombed, unlike Rumsfeld when the Pentagon was hit...) He wants to "avoid the smell of defeat," though for all practical purposes, defeat is not in the future. He wants to "try to keep things in hand," though they are entirely out of US hands.

The Ambassador admits to Bob's accusation that intelligence has been corrupted to convey a message back to Washington that the situation is less dire than it is (for higher purposes, notably getting more money allocated for the Ambassador to divvy up). Though the Ambassador has some inclinations for martyrdom (going down with the ship, or dying in the Alamo), he is eventually hustled onto a helicopter. And Vietnamese assembled for evacuation are left behind, files about them not even destroyed because of the Ambassador's insistence that any planning for cutting and running would encourage the enemy that is more or less "at the gate."

This is the interesting movie. Barbara all but disappears. When she does reappear, she has not altogether lost her poise, but is at least chagrined to realize she has lived in a fantasy world too long, and nearly waited too long to get out. (This made me think that Dench would have made a great Lady Macbeth during the 1980s; perhaps she played the role on stage...)

Although Frears is not noted as being an action director (and his modern western "The Hi-lo Country" is one of the disappointing films in his oeuvre) and there couldn't have been a large budget, the evacuation is gripping. George Fenton's musical score works well, and the extras look appropriately desperate.

A British character is not just superfluous but is in the way and wasting screen time (and she also is the story's narrator!). What is interesting in "Saigon: Year of the Cat" is in and around the US Embassy and the relationships between the Americans and the South Vietnamese who have worked with them. Someone felt that British viewers would not be interested in such a movie (just as the Anglo characters were the focus in "The Year of Living Dangerously," "Mississippi Burning," and even "Biko"). In that Dench received a BAFTA nomination, the producers may have been right about the British audience. What is good in the movie makes me more frustrated about what coulda been, shoulda been!

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P.S. On the tenth anniversary of his escape from the US Embassy in Saigon, the real former ambassador, Graham A Martin, coined the phrase that was until recently used by Bush and his minions to defame opponents: "In the end," Martin said, "we simply cut and ran."

Although his account, Decent Interval is not credited, I think that Bob is based on Frank Snepp who was the chief CIA analyst in South Vietnam, who described that last day as "like being at a funeral where all the mourners are battling each other to avoid being abandoned at graveside....The reason it ended that way was wishful thinking on the part of a lot of American officials. Few wanted to admit the war was lost. So we waited too long to plan for the exit.... Retreat is the most difficult of all military operations. But as a matter of honor you do not leave friends on the battlefield. In the evacuation of Saigon over half of the Vietnamese who finally got out escaped on their own with no help from us until they were far at sea." (For more of his insider account, see http://www.franksnepp.com/decent/index.html.) And, BTW, he had a Vietnamese mistress, not a British one.



© 2006, Stephen O. Murray


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older