Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Sympathizer’ On HBO, About A North Vietnamese Spy Still Reporting On A South Vietnamese Community In The U.S. After The War

In the new HBO limited series The Sympathizer, a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese secret police continues to spy on his countrymen after the fall of Saigon, when he has joined the South Vietnamese in Los Angeles. Believe it or not, it’s actually a dark comedy. How does it accomplish this?

THE SYMPATHIZER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of a map of Vietnam that looks like it’s from an old instructional film. “In America, it is called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, it is called the American War.”

The Gist: A man in a prison cell is told to rewrite his confession, and not to leave out any detail. “Comrade, everything I did was to advance the cause,” says the prisoner, before he starts to write down his confession one more time.

Saigon, Winter 1975, four months before it fell to the Viet Cong. The prisoner, known as the Captain (Hoa Xuande) is meeting his CIA handler Claude (Robert Downey Jr.) at a movie theater setting up big displays for the film Death Wish. Inside, South Vietnamese intelligence officers are questioning a woman caught with a roll of film that has sensitive information about their side. During the questioning, the General (Toan Le), the leader of the secret police, enters the theater. If Claude helped the Captain learn the ways of American pop culture, the General helped him learn the ways of the South Vietnamese.

What neither man knows, of course, is that the Captain is a mole for the North Vietnamese. He’s the one who shot the film the woman that’s being questioned was found with. Captain’s liaison to the North is his childhood friend Man (Duy Nguyễn); the two of them regularly hang out with their other childhood friend Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), who is an officer for the South’s Airborne division. Bon and his wife just had a baby, who is Captain’s godson. What was on the film was a list of every member of the secret police, including Captain, so the North would know who needed reeducation when they finally took over.

As the North pushes towards Saigon and the prospect of escaping to the U.S. gets closer, the General asks Captain to go through the list to see who stays and who can get on the plane Claude has been able to procure. Given the failure to retrieve the film Captain shot, it’s ironic that the hard copy of the list is now in his hands; he of course gives a copy to Man. This is when Man tells Captain that he’s going to the U.S. with the General and his family. Captain, who is half-French and went to college in the States, has an affinity for the country, and the North knows it. They figure he’ll be able to watch the General and the community around him and report back.

A big indication of Captain’s split loyalties is when he asks General if Bon and his family can be on the plane leaving Vietnam. But as the North invades and the rocket blasts surround them at the airport, Captain has to figure out whether he gets on the plane or make sure Bon and his family get on unscathed.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel of the same name, The Sympathizer has a bit of the darkly comedic feel of shows like Hunters, crossed with more modern-set series like The Brothers Sun.

Our Take: The first episode of The Sympathizer doesn’t quite give viewers an indication of just how strange and twisted the story of the Captain is going to get. The Captain will settle in Los Angeles along with the rest of the South Vietnamese families that happened to escape Saigon as it fell, but will still be spying on them and reporting to his comrades back home. But, given his proclivity to enjoy American life, his loyalties will definitely be split.

Downey is set to play multiple roles in the series, which may or may not be a distraction. As Claude in the first episode, Downey acted like a cross between James Caan and Hunter S. Thompson; his character even claimed that he was 1/16 Black. As much as we love how RDJ can disappear into his characters, we wonder if the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of Downey in multiple roles will take away from this story.

And, believe us, it is a good story. Xuande’s performance shows Captain’s split loyalties; even when he was still in Saigon, his conflict over selling out his South Vietnamese colleagues is palpable. He also likes life in America, but is reluctant to admit it. When he tells Bon that he was “fascinated and repulsed” by the country, Bon nails the American experience by interrupting him with, “That’s what it means to love America.” As he gets more comfortable in Los Angeles, the cracks in his loyalty to the government in the newly-renamed Ho Chi Minh City are going to show.

Like other shows that are currently taking place in this time period — the 1969-set Palm Royale strangely comes to mind here — there’s going to be a lot of quirky characters, a lot of stylistic filmmaking techniques used, and a very solid sense of place and time that permeates the entire narrative. That tends to be a good thing, and it will serve this narrative well. We just hope that The Sympathizer doesn’t get distracted by its gimmicks and focuses on Captain’s story.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: In his cell, the Captain hears the song “The Wanderer,” which is what he and Claude sang right before the plane to the U.S. left Saigon.

Sleeper Star: Sandra Oh plays Ms. Sofia Mori, whom we’ll see in Los Angeles.

Most Pilot-y Line: Captain is packing his spy stuff as the General walks into his quarters; Captain steps in front of the bag but doesn’t cover it very well. Is the General just not that observant?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Sympathizer tells a story about the post-Vietnam War experience that we haven’t heard much of here in the U.S., but we hope it doesn’t get bogged down by some of the gimmicks we already see in the first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.