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Photo: Hopper Stone/HBO
The Captain has a caller job. He’s heading to Hollywood for 4 months to enactment arsenic a taste advisor connected a movie astir the Vietnam War. Recruited by Niko Damianos, the manager of The Hamlet, the Captain is tasked with ensuring the film’s authenticity, a near-impossible gig, arsenic his suggestions are often dismissed oregon wholly undermined by the manager himself. The Hamlet is centered around six Green Berets who get stranded successful a Vietnamese hamlet. The Captain interprets it differently, of course, explaining it arsenic “a communicative of a tiny farming assemblage who is forced to instrumentality successful a clump of uninvited guests.” It leads you to wonder: Why did helium judge the occupation then? What intent does this broadside quest serve?
For Man, his handler, it’s a accidental to “give [the North Vietnamese] immoderate bully lines” successful a major Hollywood accumulation and to undercut American propaganda from the inside. The General likewise sees it arsenic a means to reignite American enactment for the South. But the Captain’s motives, arsenic we aboriginal learn, are much sentimental. He’s driven by a heavy nostalgia for home, though a Hollywood accumulation acceptable successful the Napa Valley strikes maine arsenic an unconvincing and unbelievable substitute for Vietnam. The Hamlet is written and directed by Damianos, a achromatic “auteur” modeled aft the real-life manager of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola. Robert Downey Jr.’s Damianos is an impudent and priggish artiste who refuses to budge connected his originative vision. At the episode’s start, the Captain is asked to contiguous his greatest misgivings with the script. He’s acrophobic that nary Vietnamese characters person immoderate lines. They don’t adjacent suffice arsenic characters. The villagers are specified accessories to the setting, portion the Viet Cong is the antagonizing unit that sets Damianos’s crippled into motion. Damianos, of course, dismisses this arsenic a originative prime intended to item the plight of the Vietnamese people.
The Hollywood subplot is a mystifying departure from the erstwhile episode’s noir-ish execution plot. The Major’s shade occasionally reappears to haunt the Captain connected set, but overall, it doesn’t marque consciousness to little the stakes aft the past episode’s adrenaline rush. Whatever affectional complaint the bid has accumulated frankincense acold sputters to a halting halt with the alteration of gait and scenery. It besides comes astatine the disbursal of america getting to cognize the Captain. As Damianos, RDJ is downright absurd and distracts from the Captain, who’s erstwhile again slotted into a second-in-command role. I’ve said it before: the publication repeatedly sells the Captain’s complexity short. Damianos’s brutish condescension and bizarre exclamations upstages the Captain’s reserved frustration. He’s incapable oregon unwilling to afloat emote connected set. Instead, helium inhabits a posture of awkward discomfort, which fails to convey his veiled contempt for Damianos and Hollywood writ large. In Damianos’s office, the Captain suggests immoderate lines for the Viet Cong successful a uncommon outburst of rage. He slams the publication connected the table, shocking the director, and yells: “Confess, you fucker!” It’s a satisfying outburst, delivered with an strength that I privation was replicated successful a aboriginal country erstwhile the Captain gets fired … but I’m getting up of myself here.
While driving to set, the Captain finds Lana hiding out in his trunk. She wants to tag on and helium reluctantly allows her to travel him. In this episode, we spot the Captain develop feelings for Lana arsenic helium presides implicit her without the General around. Yet there’s a disappointing deficiency of chemistry betwixt the two. They interact much similar siblings than imaginable lovers. At the pre-filming party, Lana fawns implicit Jamie Johnson (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper), a Green Beret histrion and popular soul singer, while the Captain meets the unit and different Green Beret actors, including James Yoon (John Cho) and the volatile method histrion Ryan Glenn (David Duchovny), who insists connected being addressed arsenic Captain Shamus.
The Captain is fixed a circuit of the accumulation by Monique (Marine Delterme), the film’s acceptable decorator and Damianos’s girlfriend. He is stunned by her attraction to detail. “I tin astir odor my mother’s cooking,” helium says approvingly. The Captain has 1 tiny petition for her: a gravestone with his mother’s name, Que Linh, since his household couldn’t spend 1 erstwhile she died. The Captain soon treats it arsenic a makeshift altar, lighting incense and displaying fruits arsenic an offering to his mother. These details offer some insight into the Captain’s past but are not a satisfactory substitute for his middling characterization. As a spy, his motivations are still quite obscure (or underdeveloped) to us. While the publication has been rather faithful to the novel, it hesitates to framework the Captain arsenic an anti-hero — a nonaccomplishment that a much mature histrion might’ve redeemed. Instead, the Captain’s countenance oscillates betwixt passivity and pathos, with none of the shrewd intellect expected of a spy.
The Captain is connected acceptable to lick hijinks. On the archetypal time of filming, for example, helium realizes that astir of the inheritance actors are not Vietnamese. Damianos allows him to regenerate the extras with existent Vietnamese people, truthful helium recruits Bon and a fewer acquainted faces from the South Vietnamese service to enlist successful insignificant roles. The Captain manages to compression successful a fewer lines of anti-American dialog and summation the actors’ wage if they airs arsenic Viet Cong. On set, the Captain notices that Bon is little depressed and enjoys acting successful scenes wherever he’s being killed. Lana, too, is anxious to unpaid arsenic an other and cozies up to Johnson.
There’s 1 country in The Hamlet that makes the Captain especially uneasy. Yoon’s quality is captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. While everyone praises Yoon for his acting (I’m biased, but John Cho ever delivers), the Captain thinks of the torturous interrogations he’s participated in. But things statesman to unravel arsenic Glenn’s committedness to method acting leads him to a intelligence spiral. The histrion has go boisterous and erratic to the different formed members, specifically Johnson, who he accuses of not taking the relation seriously. At 1 point, the Captain envisions a country betwixt Glenn and Damianos, which leads the manager to marque important changes to the script. “I’m recounting thing I didn’t witnesser myself,” the Captain confesses successful a voiceover. “Some of the dialog is conjecture but it helps to explain the events that follow.”
A speedy aside: I actually think the occurrence would person benefited from much expositional voiceover successful this manner. Imagine, for instance, a hypothetical country wherever the Captain berates and physically assaults Damianos and past pauses to admit that didn’t actually happen. It was conscionable wishful thinking. Instead, we get immoderate comedic improv betwixt RDJ and Duchovny that is entertaining but unnecessary. And later, there’s a semi-horny country betwixt Damianos and his acceptable decorator woman astir to get it on, successful which the Captain jokes, “If this offends you, delight skip ahead.”
Damianos adds a grisly scene wherever a pistillate villager gets raped by a Green Beret. To marque matters worse, the villager is named aft the Captain’s mother, Que Linh, and will be played by Lana. When the Captain learns of this, helium angrily confronts Damianos successful his office. It’s an anticlimactic confrontation wherever helium hoarsely yells, “You don’t cognize a happening astir my mother!” (Yawn.) It whitethorn beryllium his weakest country truthful far. It’s hard to judge that the Captain, who’s murdered and tortured prisoners of war, volition backmost down successful the look of a sniveling “radical director” conscionable due to the fact that he was fired. The Captain sticks astir retired of interest for Lana. A fewer days earlier the scene, Glenn goes missing and returns with a slain cervid draped crossed his shoulders, which lone adds to the Captain’s concerns.
In the scene, Johnson’s quality rushes successful and rescues Que Linh/Lana portion she is assaulted by Shamus/Glenn. Fearing for Lana’s safety, the Captain interrupts the country and ruins Damianos’s singular take. Lana stalks off, aggravated astatine his interference, and the Captain is forcibly removed from the production. On his mode out, helium stops by his mother’s “grave.” Unaware that Damianos intended to stroke up the mendacious cemetery arsenic a conclusive climax to the film, the Captain injures himself successful the explosion. It’s a confusing move: Ending an occurrence filled with low-stakes play with an explosion doesn’t quite alter the stakes. The champion meta-commentary connected this Hollywood detour was provided by the North Vietnamese commander, whom the Captain is recounting his tale: “Can you not spot however you are corrupted by the astir crass Hollywood indulgences? The precise aforesaid indulgences you tried to change?” The aforesaid can be said for this very episode, which was regrettably bereft of immoderate bully lines.
English (US)