HBO Max has had a somewhat weak year compared to its rivals. While Prime Video triumphed with Fallout, Netflix with The Three-Body Problem, and Disney Plus with Shogun, we were all waiting for a premiere worthy of the platform that has given us hits like Succession, The White Lotus, or The Last of Us.
This moment seems to have just arrived thanks to The Sympathizer, a series directed by none other than Park Chan-Wook, the South Korean filmmaker behind gems like Oldboy, Thirst, The Handmaiden, or Decision to Leave. In addition, Wook is accompanied in the series by the recently Oscar-winning Robert Downey Jr., who plays several different characters in the series.
Why should you watch The Sympathizer, the new HBO series?
The Sympathizer is the TV series adaptation of the book with the same name that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. Written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the novel takes us to Saigon (Vietnam) in 1975 to tell the story of an Army General who seeks to escape the country to start a new life in the United States of America.
However, everything gets complicated because of one of his companions, who is a snitch for the Viet Cong and is informing about the military’s plan. The story revolves around this man, who lives in a constant dilemma between betrayal and loyalty to his country. The official synopsis from HBO Max is clearer about what we will be able to see in the series:
“It is April 1975 and Saigon is in chaos. In his villa, a general from the South Vietnamese army is making a list of those who will receive passage on the last flights leaving the country. The general and his compatriots intend to start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one of them, the captain, is informing the group to a superior in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man raised by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to college in the United States, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the communist cause.”
The first episode of The Sympathizer has already premiered on HBO Max, and the series will be airing one episode each week until it reaches the 7th episode of its first (and, it seems, only) season. Will it live up to the great HBO series? So far, it seems that way.
