After her Oscar-winning act in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Michelle Yeoh is back in her element as a wacky matriarch in the Netflix series The Brothers Sun but with a delicious twist.
Created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk, The Brothers Sun is a family drama in the garb of a mafia gang war story, with violence and comedy in equal parts and with a perfect premise to bring on the mayhem.
At the centre is Yeoh’s Eileen, a Taiwanese woman from a powerful mafia family who lives in the US in anonymity with her younger son Bruce (Sam Li), while her elder son Charles (Justin Chien) lives in Taiwan with her husband ‘Big Sun’ (Johnny Kou), the leader of the Jade Dragon triad.
The brothers have lived most of their growing-up years not knowing each other — Charles in Taiwan and Bruce in Los Angeles — following a decision their parents took to keep them safe. While Charles ‘Chairleg’ Sun has grown up with his father to be an assassin, Bruce, raised by his mother in a peaceful atmosphere in Los Angeles, is a regular guy with a passion for acting. After Big Sun is shot at by an unknown gang, Charles travels to Los Angeles to protect his mother (Yeoh) and his brother, who he thinks might be the next targets.
All hell breaks loose once Charles sets foot in the US and reunites with his estranged mom and brother. The killers are on his tail while Charles too is hunting for the gang that has started the war. Caught in the crossfire is the unsuspecting Bruce, who is reeling from the discovery that his family heads an organised crime syndicate. This sets the stage for a very real and hilarious dynamic between the brothers to play out as their worlds collide and coalesce at several junctures.
While Charles is a fearless assassin who butchers his attackers with relish, Bruce couldn’t be farthest with his sensitive and averse-to-violence mindset.
What the brothers have in common, though, is their artistic bent — Charles has a passion for baking, and Bruce loves doing improv but hides it from his mother who wants him to be a doctor.
Charles undergoes a massive transformation after spending time with his mother and younger brother. He gets a taste of normal life in LA, enjoys eating churros and learns to whip up various sweet dishes. By the time things turn dark, Charles has already had a change of heart, nurturing a dream to run a bakery business with his brother.
“Neither of us are who our parents thought we are,” Charles tells Bruce in a scene, reflecting on how they both wanted lives different from the ones they were forced to live. At the end of the day, it is a story of two brothers finding their way to each other.
The Brothers Sun balances comedy with action in a way that does not feel forced. The action scenes are slick and fast-paced with a throwback to Keanu Reeves’s killer moves in the John Wick films. Justin Chien impresses in the hand-to-hand combat scenes, while Yeoh drives home Eileen’s ruthless side with a calm and cold exterior that can choke a person to death with just a telephone cord.
