HBO’s The Sympathizer trailer: Infinite Robert Downeys Jr. storm Vietnam

Spy stories have all the ingredients necessary for excellent television: There’s tension, double-crossing, and the opportunity for lots and lots of wigs. In The Sympathizer Robert Downey, Jr. wears most of the items.

Based on Viet Thanh Nayen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The SympathizerThis looks just like the next spy obsession. It’s a landmark adaptation of an acclaimed Vietnamese work, and it marks Park Chan-wook’s return to television five years after his excellent 2018 AMC miniseries Little Drummer Girl. (And a year after releasing one of 2022’s best films, Decent to Leave.)

Taking a cue from its dizzying source material — which gleefully hops from genre to genre with a dizzyingly recursive narrative about an anonymous North Vietnamese spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army, who expatriates to the United States for, among other things, a farcical film production — the trailer for The Sympathizer It is a wonderful puzzle.

Starring Hoa Xuande as the protagonist (dubbed “The Captain”), the trailer gives us a glimpse of The Captain’s Catch-22Robert Downey Jr., circa the Vietnam War, plays multiple characters in his espionage adventure.

The footage is shown below Sympathizer appears to be both a worthy adaptation of a rich novel and another exhibition for Park Chan-wook’s formidable spy-thriller chops.

The Sympathizer In 2024, premieres will be live on HBO and Max streaming.