The Sympathizer Review: A spy thriller based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name that tells the story of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the last days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the acclaimed Korean director Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, Decision to Leave), writes, directs, and produces the 7-episode series The Sympathizer, available from 20 May 2024 on Sky and streaming on NOW, starring Hoa Xuande (The Last King of Kings Cross), Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy, Killing Eve) and Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes, Oppenheimer), also executive producer. Park Chan-wook is co-showrunner with Don McKellar, director (3 episodes) with Fernando Meirelles and Marc Munden, and screenwriter with Mark Richard, Naomi Lizuka, Maegan Houang, Anchuli Felicia King and Tea Ho. A co-production HBO, A24, Rhombus Media, Moho Film and Cinetic Media.
The protagonist of the story is "The Captain", a former South Vietnamese intelligence officer, in reality, a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the last days of the war against the United States, who recounts his stay in Los Angeles in a long flashback, after escaping Vietnam following the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975, where his days as a spy are far from over.
The Sympathizer – A man in half
After many now cult feature films as an author and director, and the 2018 miniseries La Tamburina, based on the book by John Le Carrè, Park Chan-wook with The Sympathizer measures himself against another successful novel, telling a story from an unprecedented point of view a topic much "exploited" by cinema, the war in Vietnam, narrated here in the post, and showing the consequences of the conflict on a group of Vietnamese who took refuge in the United States through the memories of the protagonist, "The Captain", whose name is an unknown real name, played by a good Hoa Xuande, alongside a "transformist" Robert Downey Jr., who literally goes out of his way, in the role of "four patriarchal figures" who will mark the Captain's path.
The style of The Sympathizer winks at the thriller and spy films of the 70s, it is no coincidence that the first episode is entitled Death Wish, the original title of the 1974 cult Death Wish with Charles Bronson, whose poster stands out in front at a cinema in one of the first scenes of the series, where the protagonist and Claude (CIA agent, one of the characters played by Robert Downey Jr.) find themselves witnessing a "peculiar" interrogation.
The dialogues, the sharp "Tarantino-style" irony, and the impeccable direction, including sudden camera movements, zoom on the faces of the protagonists in the most tense moments, in short, a form with attention to the smallest details, make this series certainly worthy of a novel which poses various food for thought through a compelling story about cultural belonging, race, and ideology in a very delicate context such as the post-Vietnam War.
A form which, however, "crushes" the content, never delving into the depths of the psychology of the protagonist, a man with two faces, a double agent, divided "in half" between political ideals and letting himself go to the "futile" American life in which the horrors of war now seem distant. It is what is described passionately in the novel and which in the miniseries seems sacrificed in favor of the success of the staging and direction.
The Sympathizer: evaluation and conclusion
If you love the spy genre, The Sympathizer is the series for you, full of twists and turns and with an exceptional cast, even if the unusual choice of having Robert Downey Jr. play four characters appears a bit forced and without a real reason. A production worthy of the names involved, from the writer himself Viet Thanh Nguyen (also producer) to Park Chan-wook, who however seems to have forgotten the profound essence of the story.