HBO's Stylish Adaptation Of 'The Sympathizer' Is A Watered-Down Version Of The Book

There’s a brief moment at just about the midpoint of HBO’s adaptation of “The Sympathizer” when the show’s recurring flaw really settles in. Its fourth episode chronicles the filming of a movie within the story. Like in the miniseries’ source material — Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name — this fictional Hollywood production bears a strong resemblance to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic, “Apocalypse Now.” The novel and series’ unnamed protagonist is an adviser on the movie, directed by a volatile white male filmmaker simply called the Auteur.

Ostensibly, our protagonist — known to most people around him as an ex-captain in the South Vietnamese army, now living in the U.S. as a refugee — is there to make sure that the film and its portrayals of Vietnamese characters are culturally sensitive. But at best, he’s really there to try to temper anything super racist. (And for the most part, his attempts at course correction are utterly futile.)

The episode departs from the book in several ways, including when someone places a deer’s bloody head in another person’s bed. It’s a clear nod to “The Godfather” — and a bit too on the nose.

That lack of subtlety and taking a reference one step too far sum up the most frustrating shortcoming of the seven-episode limited series, which premieres Sunday night. Adapted by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, the show on its own is a stylish, impressively shot and well-acted spy thriller following the travails of the protagonist, who is secretly a communist agent.

But crucially, the series loses the heft of the book, sanding down its sharp edges. Elements of its mordant satire don’t cut through, and the novel’s searing commentary on who gets to tell