Get the latest gossip
HBO’s ‘The Sympathizer’ Effectively Uses a Shape-Shifting Robert Downey Jr. to Rewrite Hollywood History of the Vietnam War: TV Review
Robert Downey Jr. and Park Chan-Wook team up to adapt Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into an HBO limited series.
Nguyen’s story already contains a commentary on Hollywood representations of the conflict through a sojourn on the set of a film that strongly resembles “Apocalypse Now.” As reconceived by showrunners Don McKellar and the revered South Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook, “The Sympathizer” moves these metatextual matters to the center of its dense, ambitious, tonally varied project. Movie stars helming miniseries is now standard procedure, though “The Sympathizer” is meant to de-center dashing white guys like Downey in its account of what the title card points out is known as the American War overseas. After the fall of Saigon, including a gripping runway sequence directed by Park with virtuosic intensity, the action moves to 1970s Los Angeles, where the Captain reports on the nascent, likely futile plan for a deposed General (Toan Le) to take back their country while posing as his aide-de-camp.
Or read this on Variety
