Robert Downey Jr. may not have gotten the success he hoped for with Doctor Dolittle, but he managed to gain some credibility back with Oppenheimer, and now he’s teaming up with Oldboy director Park Chan-wook for a limited HBO series called The Sympathizer.
The show is set to premiere this April, and we have a new teaser. Check this out:
Here’s the official synopsis for the series:
Near the end of the Vietnam War, a plant who was embedded in the South Vietnam army flees to the United States and takes up residence in a refugee community, where he continues to secretly spy and report back to the Viet Cong.
The series is actually based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. The book had come out back in 2015 and won the Pulitzer in 2016. It’s sequel, The Committed, was published in March 2021.
What’s curious is the role of Robert Downey Jr. who seems to be playing multiple characters in the series. Seeing that spycraft is something that the show will tackle, I’m wondering if RDJ is just playing a character who dresses up frequently to avoid getting found out, but maybe it could be a play on how the lead character thinks all Americans look the same.
With HBO, A24, and Park Chan-wook attached to the project, we shouldn’t expect anything less than stellar from this limited series.
The Sympathizer is set to start streaming on Max on April 14.
