movies: the quiet american

So yesterday I watched two movies with the same name based off of the same book. I'd gone into it knowing they were very different but hadn't realized to what extent til I was about half way through the more recent one, made in 2002. The older one, in black and white, was made in the late 1950s. I'm almost hesitant in saying that I liked the newer one better but I think that it is more for the changes in the plot line then anything else. Plus there's the issue of finding the highly different ending of the older one more fitting than that of the new one, but unfortunately I can't mesh what I like best about both into one great movie so I must choose. The story is of a British journalist and his Vietnamese girlfriend. When a quiet, young American shows up, he changes both their lives when he falls for the journalist's Vietnamese girlfriend. Amidst the chaos of war (French Indo-China, the Communists, and maybe a third force?) it is only natural that disaster ensues. However, the two take very different takes on said disaster. The first paints the young American as wholly idealistic, good, and essentially innocent, whereas the second takes a much darker view of him, pointedly exposing his involvement with the CIA and a mysterious third force. In both movies, my perception of all the characters was vastly different, especially given the different endings - in the older one, the journalist ends up alone, whereas in the newer one, he gets his Vietnamese girlfriend back. I know that the latter movie tried to stay closer to the book (based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene) and I only wonder what the book's ending was. In any case, I suppose since I'm to choose which one I like better and discuss it with my professor, I'd be inclined to recommend the latter which stars Michael Caine and Brendan Frasier (but for reasons other than that I've heard of the actors).