American Aid worker Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) arrives in Saigon in the fall of 1952, at the height of the Vietnamese fight for independence from French colonial rule. Filled with zeal for his mission to help the people of Vietnam through his e conomic aid program and eager to learn the lay of the land from a more experienced hand, Pyle befriends London Times correspondent Thomas Fowler (Sir Michael Caine). Soon however he finds himself smitten with Fowler's young Vietnamese mistress Phuong (Hai Yen) who is as beautiful, exotic and mysterious as the city of Saigon itself. The three become swept up in a tempestuous love triangle that leads to a series of startling revelations and finally - murder. Nothing, and no one, are as it seem, in this adap tation of Graham Greene's classic and prophetic story of love, betrayal, murder and the origin of the American war in Southeast Asia.