A man from Vietnam feels rooted nowhere in bold HBO series 'The Sympathizer'

Even before the Captain comes to America, he cannot easily be defined. He is a man of two cultures but doesn’t quite belong to either. He is a man of two countries but no country. He is a man of two loyalties but perhaps no loyalties.

If that sounds dense and complex and yet intriguing, so it goes with the HBO limited series “The Sympathizer,” which is based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. This is one wild and at times murky and tricky ride, but there’s no denying the talent of the creative forces driving this work.

Veering in tone from historical drama to political/social commentary to pitch-black satirical comedy, this seven-part series from showrunners Don McKellar (“Last Night,” “The Red Violin”) and Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy,” “The Handmaiden”), is set during the Vietnam War and its immediate aftermath. Featuring dazzling camerawork, impressively staged set pieces (including a movie-within-the-series) and searing performances from the ensemble cast, “The Sympathizer” is a bold, disturbing and original work.

On occasion, it feels as if we’re spending a little bit too much time with fringe characters who aren’t nearly as captivating as the main players, but the dialogue sings and the visuals are never less than stunning, and the performances range from solid to great.

Hoa Xuande, an extraordinarily versatile Australian actor of Vietnamese descent, expertly handles the challenging and complicated role of the nameless figure known to us only as the Captain, whose entire existence feels like two sides of a coin. He’s the son of a Vietnamese woman and a French man who feels like an outsider in Vietnam and again when he comes to America. He’s a double agent, a communist sympathizer who has been embedded with the South Vietnam army, for so long, one can reasonably wonder if it has affected his judgment. Even the Captain’s close bonds with childhood friends Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen) are filled with subterfuge and misdirection, given that Bon loathes the Viet Cong, while Man is also undercover and is the Captain’s VC handler.

The story of “The Sympathizer” is told in the form of a yearlong confession the Captain has been writing from prison. We move back and forth along the timeline, with the main storyline kicking off with the fall of Saigon, which is depicted in pulse-pounding fashion and highlighted by a cinematically rendered sequence in which dozens of men, women and children race to board the last planes out during Operation Frequent Wind — and not all of them make it. As directed by Park Chan-wook, it is pure bravura filmmaking, and it will leave you shaken.

Even after the Captain has arrived in Los Angeles, he is tasked with keeping tabs on his longtime boss, the General (Toan Le), an erratic figure who has opened a liquor store but still has delusions about returning home with a militia. We also follow the storylines of a number of other key figures, including Sofia Mori (the always wonderful Sandra Oh), a Japanese American woman who becomes a love interest for the Captain; Sonny (Alan Trong, excellent), a socialist journalist, and Lana (a captivating Vy Le), the General’s daughter, who dreams of becoming a star in America. Things get ever more complicated in California, and let’s just say the bloodshed didn’t stop in Vietnam.

HBO

This now brings us to the Robert Downey Jr. portion of the program, and it’s an absolute pleasure to watch Downey sinking his chops into a quartet of roles, including a scuzzy and cynical and manipulative operative for the CIA; a self-aggrandizing “Oriental Studies” professor who engages in cultural appropriation; a right-wing congressman who for some reason looks alarmingly like 1980s Roy Scheider and sounds a bit like “Dirty Harry” Clint Eastwood, and most memorably, a megalomaniacal director with shades of Coppola and Oliver Stone who is making a Vietnam epic and isn’t particularly concerned if he offends cultures and injures a few extras along the way. Downey is squarely in Peter Sellers/“Dr. Strangelove” territory here, and he’s one of the relatively few actors who can invite and match up to such a comparison.

Still, for all of Downey’s fantastically flashy antics, this is primarily the story of the Captain and all the colleagues, friends, loved ones and enemies he has encountered along the way, leaving behind a trail of blood, regret and fears. “The Sympathizer” tells the story of the Vietnam War and its repercussions from a different viewpoint than the one we’re most accustomed to seeing, and it’s effective in a most unsettling and thought-provoking way.