The Sympathizer

New episodes every Monday on HBO and HBO Go
4 stars

The miniseries treatment of Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 best-selling novel The Sympathizer has had a strongly atmospheric first three episodes, but is now ready to deliver the excitement.

The fourth episode, to be released on May 6, puts the narrator, the Captain (Vietnamese-Australian actor Hoa Xuande), in the sweet spot: in Hollywood, where the spy and refugee has been hired to consult on a movie about the Vietnam War, or – as the Vietnamese call it – the Resistance War Against America.

“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces” – this is the first English line spoken by the Captain.

As a mixed-race, half-Vietnamese, half-French person, he is viewed as an “Oriental” by whites and an outsider by the Vietnamese. He is an agent for the North but lives in the South before its fall in 1975 and, after that, moves into the belly of the beast, Los Angeles.

The series takes on the tricky job of shining a comedic light on Western depictions of Asians and the Vietnamese in particular, without being guilty of the sins it accuses Hollywood of committing.

HBO and the production companies – including American actor Robert Downey Jr’s Team Downey – have thankfully taken none of the usual linguistic or ethnic shortcuts when it comes to portraying Asians. Here are three reasons to check out the seven-episode comedy-drama.

1. Robert Downey Jr as the Ugly American with a hundred faces

Under prosthetics, the Hollywood star plays Central Intelligence Agency operative Claude, a bringer of freedom and democracy who believes in torture.

The actor is also Professor Hammer, an expert in “Oriental studies” and a Japanophile who chides Asians for not acting Asian enough for his liking.

As Niko, the volatile film director making a movie about the war in Vietnam, he hires Cantonese speakers to play Vietnamese villagers because his audiences cannot tell the difference, nor will they care.

Underneath the fake noses and chins, Downey – who portrayed a white actor playing a black man who never broke character in the cult comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) – is clearly having a grand time. He loves playing provocative characters and presses all the racial buttons with great style.

2. South Korean film-maker Park Chan-wook’s de-romanticised view of the war

Park makes sensual, thrilling mysteries about characters with secret identities (The Handmaiden, 2016; Decision To Leave, 2022), so he would seem to be a good fit for The Sympathizer.

However, as director of the first three episodes, he takes a light touch. There is little of the lushness he is known for, but his imprint can be felt in the pacing, editing, lighting and use of the camera.

His 1975 Saigon is a tense place, ripe with opportunities for cynical humour. Here are former military officers begging for seats on planes leaving for America. Here is a former General (Toan Le) who, instead of receiving gratitude from his fellow refugees, is cowering in a toilet because women blame him for sending their husbands and sons to their deaths.

3. Losing the war and also losing the peace

“It’s a new world here. You can climb to any height. As long as you make money first. In America, we don’t have to stay just ch***s or b*****ds,” says the Major (Vietnamese actor Phanxine).

The speech, in keeping with the tone of the series, is earthy and clear-eyed in its assessment of the Asian immigrant experience.

As the refugees strive to become the model minority, their assimilation into the American mosaic will happen only if they play by the rules – that they become pawns of the establishment eager to use the community as a political tool.

For the refugees, the war will continue, on a new continent.