# The Sympathizer (2024)

> A double agent embedded in the South Vietnamese army flees to America and keeps spying for the Viet Cong from inside a refugee community.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/107075

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 7
- Episode runtime: 59 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, war, thriller
- Created by: Don McKellar, Park Chan-wook
- Network: HBO
- Cast: Hoa Xuande, Robert Downey Jr., Toan Le, Fred Nguyen Khan, Duy Nguyen, Vy Le, Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, Phan Gia Nhat Linh
- TMDB rating: 6.8/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14404618/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: bitter, darkly comic, tense, cerebral, haunting

## What critics say

Mixed audience reception, with viewers praising the lead performance and the layered look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath, while finding the pacing and the satirical tone uneven.

## Synopsis

The Sympathizer (2024) is a American limited series created by Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook for HBO, adapted from the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Hoa Xuande plays a half-French, half-Vietnamese captain who secretly serves as a communist mole inside the South Vietnamese army near the end of the Vietnam War. When he flees to Los Angeles with the general he serves, he must keep gathering intelligence for the Viet Cong while living among a tight-knit refugee community. Robert Downey Jr. plays several roles, including the shadowy Claude and the Professor, and Toan Le plays the general whose trust he cannot afford to lose. The engine of the show is a man trying to survive two sides of a war that both demand his loyalty, with each episode building tension through clandestine meetings, interrogations and the strain of a fractured identity. Told in seven episodes, it balances brutal war scenes with sardonic, darkly comic commentary on American filmmaking and foreign policy. Its tone is cerebral, bitter and wry. Fans of The Americans, The Night Manager and Apocalypse Now will find resonance in its spy intrigue, moral compromise and haunting portrait of exile.

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- [Sleeper Cell (2005)](https://ember.film/tv/2289)
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- [The Disguiser (2015)](https://ember.film/tv/57602)

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