When we first step into the world of Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook’s post-Vietnam War series The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 book of the same name, it appears to be a traditional story about Cold War espionage thriller.
The show follows an unnamed biracial North Vietnamese mole (Hoa Xuande) in South Vietnam’s secret police who is forced to flee with a handful of South Vietnamese military refugees to the United States. The Captain, which is the only name this mole is given throughout the entire series, is ordered to continue spying for the Viet Cong back home while avoiding suspicion from the South Vietnamese and the Americans. However, the more time the Captain spends in the United States and the South Vietnamese refugee community, the more he feels conflicted between fulfilling his duties and his new life as an American.
At first glance, The Sympathizer shares similar characteristics and story beats with other Cold War-era spy thrillers about double agents, such as FX’s The Americans and Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Fortunately, what starts as a familiar espionage story fans of the genre are all too familiar with slowly morphs into something much more complex, ambitious, and morally ambiguous. The Sympathizer isn’t just a political spy thriller. It is a dark comedy that satirizes the racial stereotypes and prejudices White America created toward Asian Americans and Asian immigrants. It is a post-war drama that explores how the aftermath of the Vietnam War both physically and psychologically scarred both combatants and civilians alike on both sides.
It critiques how Hollywood pictures like Apocalypse Now and Platoon have portrayed the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese people. It also comments on how war losers are often left with feelings of emasculation, emptiness, and failure. Most importantly, though, The Sympathizer is a story about identity, or more accurately, a lack of one, and no other character in this show embodies this theme better than the Captain.
The Captain is a double agent, a man with two faces who is forced to live two lives. To the General (Toan Le), his blood brother and former paratrooper Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), and CIA operative Claude (Robert Downey Jr.), he is a college-educated military officer who is committed to stopping communism from spreading to Vietnam and embodies Western ideals of freedom and capitalism. To his superior/other blood brother Man and fellow Viet Cong spies, he is a communist revolutionary who is tasked with bringing down the South Vietnamese from the inside and restoring peace and freedom to Vietnam.
The Captain is constantly forced to shift back and forth between these two versions of himself, and it happens so often that his life is further driven to chaos and misery. Whether it’s the General, the Viet Cong back home, or all the over-the-top yet antagonistic Americans played by Robert Downey Jr., the Captain is constantly being used, never given a chance to think for himself and figure out what he wants. He is always in the service of someone, and as he’s ordered to do more and more despicable things, all in the name of “freedom” and “peace,” the heavier the burden is on his consciousness.
Like Park Chan-wook’s previous directorial efforts, The Sympathizer plays around with moral ambiguity, blurring the line between good and evil. While the North and South Vietnamese armies may think of themselves as the heroes of their narratives and view the other as the villains, the show clarifies that this conflict is much more complex and morally grey. South Vietnamese characters like the General and Bon are driven by their desire to create a Communist-free Vietnam as they believe that is what’s best for their friends and families. Unfortunately, they rely on violence, torture, intimidation, and murder to achieve this goal, believing it to be a necessary evil.
Similarly, characters like the Captain and Man view themselves as Communist revolutionaries who believe violently rejecting Western capitalist ideals will mean peace and freedom for Vietnam. However, not only is the Captain forced to kill innocent people for the sake of this supposed noble cause, but his reward for his arduous efforts is not riches or glory but a sentence as a political prisoner in which he is forced to write a confession for a prison captain (the show constantly cuts back and forth between the Captain’s time in prison and his time in America).
The Sympathizer not only presents complex themes and challenging questions but also does so in a surreal and unconventional way that is not typically seen in the spy genre. It is up to the viewers to conclude what they are watching and how they feel about these characters, and this moral greyness is easily the best and most exciting aspect of The Sympathizer.
HBO’s latest is not a perfect series, as it does have its flaws. For example, the show’s pacing can sometimes drag as episodes 4 and 5 are slightly overindulgent and stray from the main narrative. Additionally, the directing peaks at episode 3 since only the first three episodes are directed by Park Chan-wook, and the rest are not as strongly directed. However, despite these flaws, The Sympathizer is a well-written and well-acted series (especially from Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr.) that tackles many different ideas and themes into a seven-episode narrative.
The Sympathizer is a complex and ambitious series that absolutely needs to be seen. While it might not be a seamless watch, it is certainly worthwhile.
Rating: 7.5/10
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