Review of The Ugly American

This long, dull and talky film about The Problem Of American Involvement In Southeast Asia looks like its first time director George Englund's graduate thesis for Stanley Kramer University. Absolutely no flow whatsoever, just a lurch from one ponderous scene of talking heads to another with two rather clumsily handled action scenes thrown in to keep the viewer from crying out in utter ennui. That some of the dialogue is intelligent as well as overwrought is due either to the adaptation of Eugene Burdick and William Lederer's novel by Stewart Stern, one of 50 and 60s Hollywood's better scribes, or perhaps to the novel itself (haven't read it so I cannot be sure). In any case, it's a tiresome slog and its ultimate message (like all products of Kramer U, this thing is big on messages) that dictators are more to be trusted than commies is, ironically, exactly what got us into the whole Vietnam morass in the first place. Give it a C.

PS...For the record, the best performance is turned in by Kukrit Pramoj, the future prime minister of Thailand, here playing the shifty PM of the fictional country of Sarkan.