Review: The Sympathizer, "Death Wish"
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of HBO’s latest limited series—albeit one that they could continue—The Sympathizer, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. As always, the first review is free for all, but subsequent reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers. To read more about what we’re covering in the months ahead, check out our spring schedule.
“I was cursed to see every issue from both sides.”
In a world where there is simply too much television—too many shows from which to choose, too many streaming services that demand separate subscription fees, and so on—sometimes a name or two is enough to grab a person’s attention. The combination of names and studios for The Sympathizer is one such situation for me, akin to that meme of WWE honcho Vince McMahon getting increasingly excited. Robert Downey, Jr. on a TV show? Interesting. RDJ + South Korean director Park Chan-wook? You’ve raised the bar. RDJ, Park Chan-wook, and a show produced by HBO and A24? Yes, let’s do it.
For some of you, of course, it may simply be that any adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer is enough to get you intrigued. At the outset, I will admit (and with no small amount of shame!) that I’ve not read the book, so I enter this series relatively fresh to the story of the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of a North Vietnamese spy in the South Vietnam Army. The hook for me was simply the combination of some big names behind the screen and an extraordinarily famous name serving as a supporting role.
Though Downey’s presence is understandably a big part of the marketing push from HBO, he is very much a supporting player if the first episode, “Death Wish,” is any indication. Very quickly, Park establishes a series that will jump around quickly in time, anchored quite well so far by Hoa Xuande as the Captain, the otherwise nameless double agent. The Captain is trying to extricate himself from his extended role working closely with a South Vietnamese General (Toan Le) so that he can pass key information and execute various missions given to him by his North Vietnamese handler/childhood friend Man (Duy Nguyen) and orchestrated by the boorish CIA stooge Claude (Downey).
The idea of seeing both sides of the issue seems key to how the Captain is able to do his job at all. After a brief glimpse into the Captain’s future as a prisoner being forced to rewrite a confession by his captors, the script (by co-creators Park and Don McKellar) gradually unravels a specific task Man gives to the Captain, and how it ends up ensnaring one of their female comrades to the point where she’s tortured in a shut-down movie theater. The Captain is repulsed by the cruelty evinced by the General and his men, but he’s also close enough to the family that the lines are blurred to a disastrous degree. At this juncture, the way in which the Captain seems genuinely torn between those two sides is accomplished as much through the frequent voiceover as it is through Xuande’s arresting performance.
Just as the Captain is trying to work both sides, or at least see what each side is bringing to the table, at such a fraught period of Vietnamese history, arguably Park is walking a careful balance as well. “Death Wish” has a lot of very dark but very effective humor, as seen through cheeky visual effects like rewinding scenes to replay them again for slightly expanded clarity. Perhaps the darkest but funniest bit comes when one of the Captain’s South Vietnamese cronies demands that space be made for his wife, daughter, and mother on a plane home. When he’s denied, he threatens to kill himself in the Captain’s office; the Captain takes the bluff, gives the man a gun and bullets, only for the man to take some sweets home instead.
But the climax of “Death Wish” is as eerie, grim, and unrelenting as a depiction of the end of the Vietnam War ought to be. On the literal eve of the fall of Saigon, the Captain, the General and his family, and many other Vietnamese evacuees are driven by bus down an airfield to the plane that will take them to America. Those plans are waylaid by bombs being dropped at the airfield, destroying the bus and many of the men, women, and children who try to make it to the plane by foot. Among the many who are killed are the wife and infant child of Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), another of Captain’s childhood friends. Park stages the sequence extremely effectively, creating an episode that almost lulls a non-reader into thinking this show will be a bit lighter on its feet but ends up stunning you with a bleak reminder of the devastation of the Vietnam War.
Now, technically, I should note that “Death Wish” ends with a slightly open question of whether or not Captain is going to leave the horrified Bon behind as the latter looks at his dead wife and baby. (At the very least, we do not literally see Captain go onto the plane.) But considering that this is just the first of seven episodes, it seems safe to assume that the Captain is going to America again, for now. At this point, the only aspect of The Sympathizer that gives me slight pause isn’t the intensity of the violence, which seems pretty much expected. It’s also not the showiness of Downey’s performance (because it is extremely showy so far, with the recent Oscar winner made up to look like a middle-aged Donny Most or a poofier-haired Paul McCrane).
It is the framing device, though. Its use here tells us that even if the Captain does go to America, he’s coming back and he’s going to be caught. And since the narration we get in “Death Wish” is a product of that framing device, I imagine we’ll be revisiting it over the next handful of weeks. I’m not always against the in medias res device that writers will use in various media, but it can tend to rob a bit of suspense in the process. But we’re one episode in, and whatever minor issues I may have here, I keep going back to that combination of names that hooked me at the start. Now, I have the blend of RDJ, Park Chan-wook, and a stellar lead performance from Hoa Xuande to keep me going. That’s a very good start.
One aspect of the marketing for The Sympathizer is teasing that Robert Downey, Jr. will be playing multiple characters here, but he’s just Claude in this premiere installment.
Not having read the book, I can only imagine that the scene in which Claude firmly but insouciantly denies the General and the Captain a larger seating chart on planes out of Saigon happened. But I could not help but laugh at Claude stating that he’s “1/16th Negro,” because it just made me think of the last time Robert Downey, Jr. got an Oscar nomination, for Tropic Thunder, a very different story inspired by the Vietnam War.
Presuming that this episode will be any indication, The Sympathizer will have lengthy subtitled stretches. I note this specifically because as an elder Millennial who leans heavily into the “elder” part, I watch most shows with the captions on, and I could not help but laugh at “crapulent major laughs” among the captions in the movie-theater interrogation scene. Not a phrase I thought I’d see today!
Speaking of that theater, considering that the very real ‘70s-era films Death Wish and Emmanuelle are visually depicted via posters, I have to assume The Combination Part II is a sly fusion of Francis Ford Coppola’s two 1974 films, The Godfather Part II and The Conversation. Good bit.
I feel like a double agent stating out loud that he’s completed his last mission is akin to the crime-drama trope of an older cop saying he’s two weeks away from retirement.
Welcome to coverage of The Sympathizer! Barring a pleasantly unforeseen circumstance, I’ll be screener-free for the series, so I’ll be watching week to week with the rest of you. I look forward to the discussion in the comments, especially from those of you who are patient enough to clue me in to the exact fidelity of this adaptation to its source material.
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