Ambassador Harrison Carter MacWhite (Marlon Brando) endures a rigorous and hostile Senate hearing to be assigned to a southeast Asian country, where he fought during World War II and where his old buddy, Deong (Elji Okada), is very influential. Although it's not in the dialogue, MacWhite demonstrates his intellectual acumen by wielding a pipe in the early scenes. He plays the martinet with his subordinates to complete the construction of an engineering project called "Freedom Road," which will bring prosperity. Prosperity for whom? It's a good question, which is best answered eventually in "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" (2004) by John Perkins. In the meantime, we'll have to settle for these old worries about communists, typical of that era and prescient about the upcoming war.
Review of The Ugly American
