The Sympathizer review: a masterful spy thriller

The Sympathizer Score Details “ HBO and Park Chan-wook's The Sympathizer is a thematically rich, stylistically refreshing miniseries that you won't ever want to look away from.” Pros Cons Adapting a piece of fiction like The Sympathizer , Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, is no easy feat. The book, among the most acclaimed of the past decade, is thematically rich and formally playful. It follows its own set of rules and does so with alluring gusto.

Sticking as close to its source material’s plot as it can, The Sympathizer tells the twisty tale of the Captain , a North Vietnamese spy working undercover in the mid-1970s to undermine the capitalistic efforts of not only his South Vietnamese boss, known only as the General , but also his longtime CIA handler, Claude .

The show has a lot of information that it has to communicate at all times, and yet its purposefully convoluted plot never feels overwhelming or confusing. That is, in no small part, due to the rigorous nature of Park and McKellar’s scripts, as well as the latter’s direction of The Sympathizer‘s stunning first three episodes . As a director, Park has always been skilled at communicating complex layers of information in a manner that is not just digestible, but invigoratingly visual.

Thanks to its 1970s Hollywood-inspired details and overarching, wild creative spirit, The Sympathizer emerges as a TV show that looks and moves unlike any other. At times, its editing rhythms feel shockingly experimental. Donald Graham Burt and Alec Hammond’s colorful production design, meanwhile, only makes it feel all the more heightened and dreamlike, and the same goes for Downey Jr.’s contributions.

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