HBO's "The Sympathizer" is an enthralling sift through identity, memory and Vietnam after the war

War blurs clean-cut reasoning despite the concrete "one versus another" description. "The Sympathizer" reminds us of this in its opening frames, presented in the style of aged celluloid dated to the New Hollywood era alongside text that reads, "In America it is called the Vietnam War. Robert Downey Jr. in "The Sympathizer" But our untrustworthy hero is also a double agent who keeps tabs on the General's activities on behalf of his CIA handler, Claude, the slippery slimeball who trained him. This is foretold at the start, when the opening card quotes a phrase from "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," another of Nguyen's works. Regardless of the evil the Captain's paranoia and self-doubt drives him to do, you may still ache for him in the end, proving "The Sympathizer" successfully wins us over to its cause.