#us-interventionism

#us-interventionism

For over 175 years - ever since the United States conquered half of Mexico - nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out. We have helped depose democratically elected leaders and propped up murderous strongmen. Trained death squads and offered bailouts to favored allies. Ran economic blockades and encouraged American companies to treat the region's riches, and its workers, like a cookie jar.

Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) was a quiet American, says Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) to a French policeman. A friend, he adds, as the lifeless corpse of Pyle stares back at him with a wretched expression. This is the scene that opens Phillip Noyce's Vietnam-set political drama before the film flashes back a few months earlier to 1952 Saigon, where Fowler, an ageing Englishman, lives leisurely as a journalist reporting on the first Indochina war.