Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

alexanderdavies-99382 "The Ugly American" has an interesting subject matter as its plot and something which might have interested Marlon Brando personally, politically speaking. The film piles on the glamour a bit too much at times as there should have been more of a hard edge to the story. There is some tension and excitement along the way but not enough, sadly. Brando does very well as the ambitious but somewhat ignorant ambassador.

danldhatu Present day Republicans decry the so-called "liberal" Hollywood community. They should read the novel that this movie was based on and then contrast it to the movie to see just how Hollywood sucked up to a political position that would be considered "right-wing" today.The story was a scathing political screed that had been put into the form of a novel. I wish that persons such as Robert MacNamera, Dean Rusk, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, et al had read and understood the novel. If they had, then perhaps America wouldn't have become mired in the Vietnam conflict.The screenwriters understood all too well the power of the story and its likelihood of offending the conservative point of view. Simply put, the scriptwriters cut the political guts out of the novel when they turned it into a screenplay, giving us merely a sub-standard political thriller.Read the novel. I just wish that George W. Bush had done so.

wrcong This film is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Burdick and Lederer, but departs from the novel in some significant particulars that I won't get into here. I think it is important to view this film as a period piece. Released in 1963 before the assassination of JFK and the escalation of the war in Viet Nam, the story retains a certain degree of naiveté about the role of the United States in the world and the perceptions of the United States that existed in other countries. This film would have looked quite different had it been shot in 1968 or 1969, by which time the country had long since shed any illusions about the nation's role in the world. In some ways, this provides a kind of still photo of the United States just prior to the Kennedy assassination and the tumultuous sequence of events that unfolded afterward. For that reason, this is a fascinating period piece that survives Brando's chewing on the scenery and a screen play that departs in unfortunate ways from the outstanding novel.

x_hydra 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.