From the moment The Sympathizer was announced, it was met with a combination of excitement and apprehension. The excitement came from the involvement of Park Chan-wook, the director of Korean thriller classics such as Oldboy, who seemed tailor-made to adapt such a sharp, darkly acidic story as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer winner. But some of the apprehension, and a dash of that shared excitement, came from the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in not one, but four different roles.
