The Sympathizer (2024) User Reviews

Starts with a bang!

[christopherguinness · 8/10 · 15 April 2024]

I didn't know what to make of this mini-series from the previews. It seemed underwhelming. And Robert Downey Jr. Looked all the bit of a caricature.

However, realizing Park Chan-wook was involved, heavily gave me all the faith needed to fully invest. His work on the original Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr Vengence and Thirst brought Korean Cinema into its golden age, two decades ago.

The Sympathizer itself has the hallmarks of a Chan-wook film. The absurd, yet believable and charming characters. The constant sense of dread and a plot that feels like it can punish someone you are starting to care for, very quickly.

Excited to see where the series goes and feeling confident it's going to be good with its source material being a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The novel takes place in the US.

[artgrowden · 8/10 · 25 April 2024]

I do not know what book the reviewer who claims the novel is set in France read but The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen takes place in America. That is the whole point of the story. The main character is a communist spy undercover as an aide to a South Vietnamese military commander who escapes to the United States of America at the conclusion of the war in Vietnam. Once in America, the narrator is then is a sleeper agent and a wry observer of American culture. His commentary on American life and capitalism offers a fresh perspective not offer seen and allows us, as readers, to see the war and its aftermath from a different and much needed viewpoint.

Looks like this show could be great after seeing episode 1

[ThomasJ_9120 · 9/10 · 16 April 2024]

Robert Downey Jr on an HBO show that Team Downey produced is looking promising after episode one . Looking forward to seeing how this series plays out ,definitely has an interesting story. People saying in their reviews that Downey should let another actor play the role is ridiculous , having one of the best actors of our time playing this role can only improve this show also bring in more viewers considering the other cast members are unknown but after seeing the pilot the cast is great! The last show that Team Downey produced about Perry Mason was amazing so I would expect this to be just as good if not better ,guess we'll see.

How the Vietnamese adjusted to life in the US

[paul-allaer · 6/10 · 27 April 2024]

As Episode 1 of "The Sympathizer" (2024 release; 7 episodes of about 55 min each) opens, it is 1975 "Four Months Before the Fall of Saigon", and "Death Wish" is playing in theaters in Saigon. We are introduced to Claude, a CIA agent who is working with the General, a high ranking guy in South Vietnam's army. Also in the General's inner circle is the Captain, who is actually a spy for North Vietnam. At this point we are a0 minutes into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the film adaptation of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which I have not read. While episode 1 brings us the end of the war, the remainder episodes focus on how the fleeing Vietnamese adjust to life in the US. This is billed as "black comedy", but to be honest I didn't see much comedy in this, black or otherwise. To be honest, I never really connected with any of these characters. That is not to say that this is a "poor" mini-series, though. But I had hoped for more/better than what this mini-series offers. I've seen 2 episodes so far, and I will give it 1 more try with Episode 3.

"The Sympathizer" premiered on HBO a few weeks ago and is also streaming on Max, where I've been watching it. The mini-series is currently rated 88% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which feels very generous to me. If you are in the mood for what life was like for the Vietnamese feeling their country after the fall of Saigon and coming to the US, I'd readily suggest you check it out and draw your own conclusion.

1st episode 10/10

[johnnyvegab · 9/10 · 18 April 2024]

Let me tell u! What a awesome episode, i don't know what's next , but it's solid, smart and action bomb in last minutes.. hope keep going same taste and i recomended al 100% watch it if u like spy and war story with a other kind of point. Robert D. Jr. And Hoa Xuande do great roles and emotions in all the track.

Another good reason is the scenography and visuals themes in the history... Maybe the ex marines have a better idea of this, but for me is sober and educative about this war.

We know is bases from the book , i don't read it anyway!!!!!! Waiting for the next week to see what happen later!

Skipped an important beginning

[Dioxholster · 7/10 · 26 April 2024]

The start of the show needed to be a season long and not skip to American story. Missed opportunity for contrasting worlds between South Vietnam, North Vietnam and California. Good acting and premise. A24 should cease operations, they so bad.

The start of the show needed to be a season long and not skip to American story. Missed opportunity for contrasting worlds between South Vietnam, North Vietnam and California. Good acting and premise. A24 should cease operations, they so bad.

The start of the show needed to be a season long and not skip to American story. Missed opportunity for contrasting worlds between South Vietnam, North Vietnam and California. Good acting and premise. A24 should cease operations, they so bad.

Underrated

[sawthuyaaung · 9/10 · 30 April 2024]

People expect serious tv series like Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, Shogun or The Last of Us. But this is Edgar Wright's style comedy but tv show. Funny, Engaging, Interesting and Good Acting. This is better Comedy than F. R. I. EN. D. S or Oscar bait serious WAR movies like Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge and 1917 which are overrated. People's imagination go War movies or series not serious low rating. If you like What We do in the Shows, Tropic Thunder, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, or any Edgar Wright's Movies like I did You will have a Wonderful time and have a Fun watching the show unless if you are expecting serious war TV show.

The movie distorts the history

[thoangbc · 3/10 · 28 April 2024]

Unfortunately, the movie Sympathizer Episode 1 indeed distorts history.

Please look at just a few examples:

1- South Vietnamese Police force's uniform during the war. It was the white shirt with grey pants. In the film, the director changed it to a beige shirt and beige pants uniform.(In addition to regular Police force, the Republic of Vietnam also had a Field Police force with military-like camouflage uniform).

2- In the movie, the Police General rode a big motorbike to lead the evacuation bus through the streets of Saigon to Tan Son Nhut airport. According to the movie, this evacuation bus took place one day before the fall of Saigon, so it was April 29, 1975. But what kind of crazy general would do such a thing? Firstly, it would attract people's attention. Secondly, that day, undercover communist agents already emerged from hiding on the streets of Saigon. How could the General dare to be a target for their handguns? I believe that the author has a certain contempt to the generals of South Vietnamese government so he attempted to ridicule the Police General in his novel.

3- Also in the movie, the evacuation bus drove through deserted streets with uniform of South Vietnamese soldiers littered all over the streets. The reality is it was not until 11:30 AM of April 30, 1975, when President Duong Van Minh ordered the army of the Republic of Vietnam to surrender, then the soldiers took off their military uniform and laid down their rifles (some units even did not follow the order and fought to their deaths). But in the movie, this scene took place on April 29, 1975. This is distorting history and defaming the Republic of Vietnam army with the implication that they were cowards and had deserted one day before the President issued the surrender order.

4- Due to 21 years of division (1954-1975) with different political systems, North Vietnam and South Vietnam used many different words for the same things. But the movie let the South Vietnamese Captain speak the North Vietnamese terms. For example, for "bring the car", North Vietnamese say "Dieu xe" but South Vietnamese say "Mang xe/dem xe".

Movie directors in Vietnam are quite careful when making historical films. For example, when making a film about South Vietnam during the French colonial period, they invited the late veteran writer Son Nam to be a Cultural Advisor, to ensure images of houses, cars, clothes, language, etc. Be faithful to historical truth.

Writer Nguyen Viet Thanh was just a 4-year-old boy when Saigon fell so he knew nothing and remembered nothing. But when writing about Saigon in its last days before the fall, he failed to ask his parents or his senior community members to check if the details in his story match the reality. The person more to blame is film director Park Chan-wook. He didn't view thousands of photos and documentaries about South Vietnam during the war. He also did not use a senior Vietnamese Cultural/Historical Advisor who is easily available among Vietnamese American communities all over the U. S.

Utterly and brilliantly enternating

[mbs-50561 · 9/10 · 1 May 2024]

Excellent casting and all brilliant actors. Fun, intense and with some slightly surreal twists and a nice touch of dark comedy in addition. A nice and fresh take to the usually fairly cliche spy genre. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen for a second in fear of missing a point or quirky twist of events. Robert Downey Jr is brilliant in 4 (or is it 5?) slimy roles, and he does each one brilliantly. But every single actor, main and others, are so well cast and brilliantly portraying their characters. I haven't read the book and don't intend to, so I've had the pleasure of being entirely unprepared, hence free/unbiased and able to just lean back and enjoy the ride. This is the best I've seen in a long time.

Mediocre at best.

[victorpham-01694 · 5/10 · 7 May 2024]

I went into this with high expectations... and it's not great. It's not bad. It's okay at best. If you were expecting a classic based on the Pulitzer winning novel, it misses entirely.

The Vietnamese is a bit off, the show is clearly intended for an American audience. For Vietnamese like myself, it's a mediocre show. It thinks it's fancy and artsy, even something revolutionary within the Asian-American cinematic scene, but it's more or less the same and doesn't take many risks. It could have been darker, more grungy, reminiscent of war times (called the American War in Vietnam), but it chooses to have an annoying main character with a preppy persona played by Hoa Xuande (who looks a little lost in his role) and four Robert Downey Jr's.

Went into this with hype, seeing Vietnamese representation, and was disappointed with what I saw.

A Superb Spy Saga

[preynolds-50428 · 10/10 · 22 April 2024]

HBO's The Sympathizer takes Viet Thanth Nguyen's award-winning novel and crafts a story that goes beyond the historical hyperbole so familiar to those of us who were growing up during the Vietnam war. Hoa Xuande plays The Captain, who walks a typical spy-vs-spy tightrope which never feels stale, thanks to the crisp writing and fast-moving direction teams. He's tasked with working for a South Vietnamese general as Saigon begins its fall in April of 1975 and he feverishly tries to juggle his official duties with his covert operations as a communist spy for North Vietnam.

Robert Downy Jr. Romps through the era as CIA operative Claude, who works with The Captain through the evacuation from Saigon and re-integration into American society. Sandra Oh makes her appearance stateside during episode two, bantering about the inherent racism within Orientalism and bedding our hero for fun.

Viewers will undoubtedly be emotionally and politically divided in their response to The Sympathizer, but HBO offers us a multi-faceted point of view about the Asian people who lived through the Vietnam War, and their post-survival journey.

Good attempt to capture an awesome book

[jcb-5 · 9/10 · 5 May 2024]

This is a good attempt to capture the essence of a very complex and gripping book,

The story mostly deals with the internal conflict of the captain, who in the book is never named. He is a double agent really VC who is working for the S Vietnamese General, who is both ruthless and incompetent, and uses the captain both as his manservant and secret policeman to do his dirty work and write his speeches.

The story arc starts with the fall of Saigon with the Americans pulling out and continues the refugees settle in America, and the story is told by the captain writing his confession later once he had returned to Vietnam and is captured by the N Vietnamese and is being reeducated to remove his western decadence in a Prison Camp.

Robert Downey Junior is in good form playing several corrupt American characters. Very enjoyable series.

Mediocre

[phongvo53 · 2/10 · 20 April 2024]

Downey Jr can act and has money, so he should have given other actors a chance like Mel Gibson and Favreau gave him..he looked ridiculous playing all those different characters with make up, I'm surprised he didn't put on a wig and makeup to play Sandra Oh's character. As for the captain, I can barely understand his Vietnamese and he's too young to play a captain and looks nothing like Eurasian and those contact lenses didn't help...why would they let a Korean director (Park) direct a Vietnamese series? He can barely speaks English and definitely does not know Vietnamese. Would you let a white director direct "12 years of slave"? Tran Anh Hung just won best director at Cannes film festival and Victor Vu and Hoan Tuan Cuong have films on Netflix and there are other good Vietnamese directors... only a Vietnamese director would know how Vietnamese talk, our mannerism etc...it's a culture thing. The book is better.

If you like this television series, then you must not have read the book.

[drawoh · 1/10 · 26 April 2024]

Among the many honors bestowed upon The Sympathizer is selection as one of Time magazine's 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time. Yes, it also includes sophisticated humor, but nothing goofy.

In this treatment of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, mystery and thrill are on the back burner, while self-indulgence is in ample supply. It is essentially a vehicle for Robert Downey Jr. To amuse himself with a succession of annoying characterizations, but director Park Chan-wook contributes innumerable quirky gimmicks and distractions.

Full disclosure: having began the series with high expectations we gave up on it after the second episode. If you can't hack it, an excellent alternative is available: Read the book.

Starts off on a high note ...

[leokeeley · 3/10 · 30 April 2024]

... but rapidly subsides into an incoherent vanity project for Robert Downey, Jr.

Downey is usually terrific and it's hard to grasp why he signed on to this slice of bland mediocrity. One guesses he either owed someone a favor or is in dire financial straits. The dialog and direction are like something out of a high school theater production.

I don't know nor do I especially care about the source material. The general concept of a North Vietnamese double agent floating between Vietnam and the US is fertile enough ground for this series to have been much better.

It doesn't appear that the producers were really trying all that hard.

A rather sad excuse....but for what really?

[keenast · 1/10 · 8 May 2024]

So what do we have here - supposedly a famous book, alas I haven't read it, either way the film should be able to stand on its own legs which I can't see t doing.

Lots of money was spent in endless CGI shots but again there was no emotion - I watched it in disbelief, asking myself what for.

I like Robert Downey but after watching this production a bit less. Acting all in all is somehow middle of the road but partially just bad. Mr Downey unfortunately fits right in here, his sin is that he is just boring. I see him trying to pull of some 'amazing' acting stunts - like what's with the endless impersonation of numerous characters, one worse than the other. He's no Marlon Brando and shouldn't try to be one. Besides that he's also credited as 'executive producer'. It seems nowadays everybody is one! One has no idea if he actually fulfilled this job there (probably not) or, as usual, the 'production' put an exec producer crown on his head just because....we'll never find out why and how that came about, I guess we better don't want to know anyway.

Regarding directing: To me it looks like the director tried hard to be 'original' - to what purpose though stays unclear to me.

Regarding camera, lighting, design, sound etc; all crew involved are obviously good tradesmen but is that enough?

Resume: HBO tried to pull off producing a TV 'prestige' show but failed miserably. They attempted to marry Apocalypse Now with MASH.

Oh damn

[alexandrelebrun-36205 · 3/10 · 26 April 2024]

I was expecting a spy thriller, something interesting with a vaguely historical background but definitely not this.

The first episode is an exception, but for the rest it is mainly a long series in which we look at the life of our protagonist (Vietnamese spy in the USA) whose mission is to report to the Vietnamese communists about the situation in America .

I move very quickly to the revisionist side of history, we would like to believe that the USA helped South Vietnam to fight the evil communists of the North. The documented reality is that America invaded South Vietnam and was fighting primarily against the South Vietnamese resistance. The best example is that the famous 'Vietcong' that we hear in all the movies means South Vietnamese resistance fighters, there were relatively few North Vietnamese fighters.

But after all it's Hollywood, we're not close to an approximation in terms of history. Especially when it concerns American patriotism.

Where this poses a problem, in my opinion, is that the series is actually intended to be a discovery of America by our protagonist, leading him to comical and eccentric situations. The meeting with the oriental language teacher, the dinner where we learn that he likes to compare himself to eggs, his secretary of Japanese origin, etc...

We feel that in the mind of the creator, all these situations are supposed to be comical but unfortunately it is a failure. It's the type of humor you find in films made in Hollywood, personally it's not my style at all.

When you remove the historical aspect, the spy thriller, and even the humorous aspect is missed, there isn't much left. It's good for sleeping, yes.

I give 3 stars because it will allow me to go to bed early 😂

Terrible

[scsuntan · 3/10 · 17 April 2024]

As a Vietnam era veteran I could not wait to see this series. After viewing 1/2 hour of episode 1, I turned it off. Just terrible. The acting, the actors, it had nothing to do with war. I felt there should have been scenes that depicted a military camp or soldiers. It just didn't make sense to me. What was it about? Maybe I'm getting too old but I just couldn't follow the scenes or the actors. What they said made no sense to me. I expected a lot more from the individuals that put this together. The whole Vietnam era is very touchy with americans. I thought this would be made with A Touch of Class.

Robert Downeys makeup was a joke. The other reviewers loved it. I will watch it one more time. But I don't think it's going to get any better.

War

[moha-65022 · 1/10 · 23 April 2024]

1,353,000 deaths. And you make a comedy series. How victims and families would react when they see this work. War is destructive and devastating. It can cause immense suffering. The effects of war include long-term physical and psychological harm to children and adults, as well as reduction in material and human capital. War destroys communities and families and often disrupts the development of the social and economic fabric of nations.involves intimate violence, including witnessing death through direct combat, viewing the enemy before or after killing them, and watching friends and comrades die.

mixed bag

[voigaswolpertinger · 10 May 2024]

I do not write many reviews, usually when I am really blown away or feel that a movie or show is treated/viewed unfair or too harsh.

When I read about the book "the sympathizer" was being adapted into a mini series, it was thrilling. It was a great read and kept me awake for a few nights.

Episode 1 of the tv show was okay, followed by two serious letdowns. The fourth episode made up for it in certain aspects, somehow it was a parody on a previous parody, starring Robert Downey Jr, named "Tropic Thunder". Coming to that actor, is where I personally see the whole problem with the sympathizer show. It appears to be a vanity project for Iron Man. He takes on multiple roles but excells in none, aside from the weird movie director. Neither his CIA spook nor the cultural sucker professor are well done.

So, why even give it a five out of ten? For the 1st and 4th episode, for it being a show set in cool locations and including dark moments in history. Overall tho, I have to force myself to keep on watching, not looking forward to soak up the next episode.