The Sympathizer
(Max)

The Sympathizer 🇻🇳

A24 and HBO have teamed up to deliver an adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s acclaimed 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, produced by Robert Downey Jr. and directed by the highly respected Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, 2003).

The Sympathizer takes place during the Vietnam War, where a double agent who goes by ‘The Captain’, played by Hoa Xuande (Cowboy Bebop), aids the American and South Vietnamese armies in their counterintelligence program against the North before they are aggressively forced to flee Vietnam by the Viet Cong, with whom he has secretly been working for the entire time.

The Captain must now find a way to report back to the North while stuck in America as he navigates the growing tensions of the Southern Vietnamese people, who are still trying to “fight the good fight” and reclaim what was once theirs.

First and foremost, Hoa Xuande, where have you been?

Hoa completely embodies The Captain character in a way that feels like no one else could’ve played him. It’s a character with a relentless and committed determination that encompasses the duality of man, as his Vietnamese roots begin to conflict with his English dreams.

As that internal conflict grows, we begin to see an unsettling decay of steadiness while he unravels at the seams of his transgressions. That unravelling stems from wanting a life he can never have but still teasing himself with enough moments that give him false hope, because his life has become living to the expectations of others.

The Captain’s isolating journey is the driving force behind this thought-provoking, character-driven series.

On the other side of that, we have Robert Downey Jr. playing four different characters, which, to be honest, is a bit jarring at first and took me out of a lot of what was happening in the beginning of the show, but eventually I bought in because of how the story is being told.

We see events from a singular perspective, and two people can look at or go through the same thing and have entirely different opinions on how things unfolded. That’s the genius of the story. The way it’s presented slowly makes you begin to second-guess the narration, and then when you look back at the oddities in the beginning, it all starts to make a lot more sense.

I think it also helps to brush up on your Vietnamese war history so you can understand the many hypocrisies that were acting out during this unnecessary war and how the end result fractured a country to its ideological core.

At the forefront, we had the Americans failing to play the world's police as they tried to have an unsolicited dick-measuring contest with the world that they clumsily back out of before having to face any repercussions. Then we have the southern part of the Vietnamese nation develop a false hope by fighting a battle that they’ve already lost but have yet to come to terms with. The story wants you to believe that “wars never die; they just hold their breath,” and I think by the end, that’s up to you to decide.

I found myself losing my patience with the show in the beginning, but the second half really drives home a compelling story that is as thought-provoking about its content as it is inescapable.

The Sympathizer is a quirky yet intensely harrowing interrogation dramedy that cements Hoa Xuande as a future star and provides a uniquely original take on a war that inexcusably used a nation like a pawn on the world's chess board.

Enjoy!

7.8/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 60mins
Episodes: 7
Where: New Episodes Stream Sundays on Max and Crave TV.

The Sympathizer Review (2024) The Richmond Reviewer -  April 14th, 2024.

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