“All wars are fought twice. The first on the battlefield. The second time in memory.” This line, emblazed in Vietnamese and English in the opening moments of The Sympathizer, is taken right from Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s bestselling novel of the same name. Fittingly, it also serves as the thesis statement for Max’s adaptation of the sprawling work, a fleet-of-foot miniseries that explores the malleability of identity and perception through the lens of the Vietnam War, and the dynamic lenses through which our lives and conflicts can be viewed.

That duality is encapsulated in the titular character, a French-Vietnamese biracial protagonist known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande). From his childhood in Vietnam, he was always ostracized for being neither white nor Asian enough; his only solace came from his two friends, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen), who instead frame his heritage as being “twice of everything.” Cut to Vietnam in the ’70s, in the days leading up to the Fall of Saigon: He works for the Vietnamese Secret Police, interrogating Viet Cong prisoners at the behest of his arrogant martinet of a boss, The General (Toan Le). But he’s also a communist mole, feeding information back to Man, who’s now his North Vietnamese Army handler, and his daily life is a struggle to reconcile all of these varying identities.

That struggle is further compounded after the Fall of Saigon (an escape attempt rendered in the first episode as an exciting, terrifying barrage of booming explosions and a foot race to a fleeing cargo plane). The Captain and Bon make it to America, though not without some heartbreaking losses for the latter; now, the two are alone, the Captain still required to report on the General’s activities while laying low for both his CIA handlers and the LA cultural figures who treat him as an object of curiosity.

Given the contrasting identities, fragmented timelines, and dramatic shifts in tone and place The Sympathizer takes over its seven episodes, it’s a wonder it turns out as assured as it does. Much of the credit must, of course, fall to co-showrunners Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave) and Don McKellar (Last Night), who craft an intriguing structure out of Nguyen’s novel. The first three episodes, directed by Park, are some of the show’s most assured, with Park’s signature lightness and wit suffusing the grimly funny misadventures the Captain must endure both in Vietnam and LA. Fitting to the ’70s setting, there’s a Mod Squad vibe in some of the Captain’s bits of derring-do, and the period costuming and production design helps that along nicely.

But with all respect to Director Park, it’s the fourth episode, directed by City of God‘s Fernando Meirelles, that cuts to the heart of The Sympathizer‘s identitarian tug of war, as The Captain finds himself the Vietnamese cultural advisor on a hastily-shot Vietnam war epic called The Hamlet. The shoot is a powder keg of contrasting egos, arguments about “authenticity,” and, for The Captain, the nagging feeling that his American friends are merely interested in the vague aesthetics of Vietnamese people and places for their own cultural consumption. Shades of Tropic Thunder abound, from David Duchovny and John Cho showing up for fun little turns as out-of-control actors to the exploitation of the Vietnamese (or, in some cases, “close enough”) extras forced to say and do things they’d never do in the name of Drama.

Of course, the biggest shared element from Tropic Thunder is star and executive producer Robert Downey Jr., fresh off his Oscar win for Oppenheimer, in a decidedly Dr. Strangelove series of over-the-top roles. Over the course of the series, he flits in and out of the Captain’s life as one paternal figure after another: a pop-culture-savvy CIA handler, an appropriative cultural secretary obsessed with the difference between the “Oriental” and “Occidental” mind, a growly Congressman, and, in episode four, an out-of-control filmmaker. Downey clearly has fun slapping on new prosthetics and trying out new voices, though chameleonic he ain’t; it’s all varying flavors of the RDJ we’ve come to know and love. (He’s hardly Kirk Lazarus, though blissfully there’s no blackface this time.) Still, it’s a riveting series of performances, filled with his signature improvisatory brio; he clearly relishes the chance to break out of the Tony Stark mold in his post-Disney fugue.

But the lynchpin of the series is Xuande, a relative newcomer whose blank-slate nature is paradoxically one of the most successful things about his character. The Captain, after all, must be everything to everyone, and Xuande is slick and amiable enough to glide from one social situation to the next without arousing suspicion. At the same time, he struggles to know and cement himself in the various worlds he inhabits, none of which he fully belongs to: In America, especially, his moments of greatest solace come from the middle-aged Japanese secretary (Sandra Oh) with whom he begins a casual, tragic dalliance. While the final three episodes, directed by British TV stalwart Marc Munden, are easily the lesser stretch of the series, Xuande’s pained, dynamic performance keeps the whole thing aloft.

Discussions around The Sympathizer‘s sense of “authenticity” are a trap, and the show itself knows it. Through the Captain’s eyes, we see the ways in which Western conceptions of Southeast Asian culture are rife with stereotypes, reductive caricatures, and misunderstandings, however well- or ill-intentioned. As refugee, as immigrant, as sympathizer, the Captain must navigate all of the ways his varying identities are received and consumed by those around him — even his own countrymen. In this respect, it’s probably about as close as we can get to something approaching the truth, one nonetheless cloaked in ambiguity and complexity.

The Sympathizer airs on Max starting April 14th.

The Sympathizer Trailer: