Gettin' My Eps In: The Sympathizer E1

Park Chan-Wook brings his talents to HBO for what is shaping up to be a fascinating series

For the next show that I’m planning to cover on an episode-by-episode basis:

The Sympathizer
Episode 1: “Death Wish”
Written by Park Chan-Wook, Don McKellar, and Viet Thanh Nguyen
Directed by Park Chan-Wook
Streaming on Max

I knew very little about this series going in, other than that it was created by Park Chan-Wook, features Robert Downey, Jr. in multiple roles, and has something to do with the end of the Vietnam War. And I guess you don’t really need to know much more than that, as long as you trust Park to deliver. I’ve been a fan of his ever since Oldboy came out, and he’s been consistently turning out exciting movies that are directed nearly flawlessly while featuring tense moments and surprising twists and turns. And based on the first episode of this miniseries, it seems like he’s not going to disappoint.

While Downey seems to be the nominal star, he’s actually just a supporting character, at least in this first episode. We spend pretty much all of our time with a character who is apparently just known as The Captain (Hoa Xuande), who is an aide to a high-ranking general in the South Vietnamese army (Toan Le) and a member of the country’s Special Police. His role is to hunt North Vietnamese informants and spies, but we quickly learn that he’s actually a Viet Cong spy himself, and he’s walking a tricky path between carrying out his duties and avoiding being found out. To make matters more tense, all of this is happening during the last days of the war, just before the United States is about to pull out of Vietnam.

The Captain’s tricky circumstances get revealed in a clever series of scenes that jump back and forth in time. We start when he meets with the general and Claude (Downey), a guy from the CIA, as they observe the questioning of a young woman who was caught trying to smuggle information out of Saigon. We flash back to see The Captain track her down after getting a tip, and when his men catch her, she reveals to him that she knows who he is. And then in another flashback, we learn that he was actually the one who stole the information she was carrying and passed it on to her before being put in the position of arresting her. It’s all done in an exciting, almost frenetic fashion, dropping viewers into the action and expecting us to figure out what’s going on.

We also see The Captain hang out with a couple of his childhood friends, one of whom is a hero of the South Vietnamese army and the other of whom is revealed to be one of his fellow spies. The army friend, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), has a wife and baby, and The Captain is working to make sure that the family will be able to escape with the general during the withdrawal of American forces. The Captain, as a committed Communist, is planning to stay behind, but he learns that his Viet Cong superiors have ordered him to accompany the General to the U.S. so that he can continue his spying activities.

This all leads up to the episode’s climax, a riveting, harrowing scene in which The Captain, Bon and his wife and child, the general’s family, and a bunch of others are trying to get to the cargo plane that will evacuate them. When bombs start raining down on the airstrip, they have to run for their lives, dodging explosions and hoping they can make it at the last minute. It’s thrilling stuff, and it ends in a devastating moment that highlights the dangers of the situation and sets up what will likely be a series of tense predicaments throughout the rest of the series.

Park Chan-Wook directed this first episode, and he’s also credited as one of the writers and a co-creator of the series as a whole, adapting it from a novel by Viet Than Nguyen (who was also a writer on this episode). He definitely delivers on the promise, providing plenty of scenes that are exciting, funny, quirky, and full of fascinating details.

I expect the series will play around with the idea of The Captain being a sympathizer, since he’s going to be torn between different loyalties. We learn that he attended college in the United States, and he speaks English through much of the episode, including when he’s interacting with Robert Downey, Jr. and even when he’s hanging out with the general. That’s partly why he has been chosen to go to America and continue spying, even when he professes his commitment to the Communist cause and wants to remain behind. There’s a great line where his fellow spy friend says that he’s perfect for the job, since he spent his time at college writing to them about what it was like in the United States. When he protests, saying that he had to let others know how “fascinated and repulsed” he was by American life, his buddy says, “That’s what it means to love America.”

So, it seems like the conflict is going to involve The Captain struggling to maintain his Communist ideals while being immersed in American life, and in fact, we see in some flash-forwards that he’s going to end up back in Vietnam being questioned about his loyalty. At the same time, he’s also going to be torn between his duties and his loyalty to his friends. We get a picture of the bond that he shares with them as they call themselves “blood brothers” and recite the motto of the Three Musketeers (in Vietnamese). This highlights the tragedy that they have already suffered due to the war, and I expect that there will be plenty more tragedy and heartbreak to come.

I really don’t know what’s going to happen in this series, but I’m very excited to see it play out. While there will certainly be plenty of intrigue and tension, the approach the series takes seems quirky enough that there will likely be plenty of room for humor. And judging by the stylish way this episode is edited, I’m looking forward to more cleverness and exciting direction from Park Chan-Wook. If the series can also throw in some critique of American excesses and the hypocrisy of our foreign policy, all the better. This should be good.