The Sympathizer (2024-)

Acclaimed Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) teamed up with actor, writer, and director Don McKellar (Last Night, Sensitive Skin) in 2024 to adapt the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen into an HBO miniseries. Hoa Xuande stars as The Captain, a communist operative embedded in South Vietnam, who escapes to America near the officially declared end of the Vietnam War, and poses as a refugee while gathering intelligence to send back to Southeast Asia. Robert Downey Jr. may sound like he's playing another superhero as Professor Hammer, but he's a CIA intelligence officer who is either helping or hindering The Captain's agenda to meet his own ends. Downey is clearly loving this chance to play a flamboyant character, the kind who will strip down to his underwear to change into a kimono in front of our hero, which is a real thing that really happens in episode two!