The Brothers Sun: Netflix's Gen & Globe-Spanning Action Dramedy Burns Bright |
The smartest thing about The Brothers Sun? It lets Michelle Yeoh take her rightful place, writes Joshua Muyiwa. |
SECRETS are the life force of every family. The younger generation doggedly seeks to learn something new about their tight-lipped family only to discover something old lingers within themselves. Meanwhile, the older generation determinedly buries those secrets deeper and deeper. This intergenerational tension is just the starting point for Netflix’s The Brothers Sun, an eight-episode action dramedy from new kid on the block Byron Wu and old hand Brad Falchuk. (Falchuk has co-created shows like Glee, American Horror Story, Scream Queens and Pose with Ryan Murphy.) The Brothers Sun is the story of an Asian nuclear family stretched between homes in Los Angeles and Taipei. In LA, Eileen — played by the superlative Michelle Yeoh — adores her son Bruce (Sam Song Li), a nerdy medical student. But she doesn’t know he has been syphoning off his tuition money to feed his true calling: improv comedy. On the other side of the world, in Taiwan, estranged father and husband Big Sun (Johnny Kou) is the head of a powerful criminal organisation called the Jade Dragons; his elder son Charles (Justin Chien), has been groomed as a deadly assassin and heir apparent since he was a child. Decades ago, the Suns decided to live apart as a safety measure. Their oft-repeated (and slightly annoying) mantra being ‘protect the family’. |
In the opening sequence of this series, we fly between the twinkling, towering skyscrapers of Taipei at night to get a bird’s eye view into the goings-on inside a glorious penthouse. Here, we witness a smartly dressed and aproned Charles watching The Great British Bake-Off while meticulously baking a set of desserts. Suddenly, three assassins in colourful Chinese opera masks pop in on him and he effortlessly eliminates them. These fight sequences are brutal and beautiful. But The Brothers Sun isn’t all about the blaze of gore and glory, it is also here for the giggles. And so, this fight sequence is underscored by the plucky and pointed commentary of the baking show. As a body crashes down through the roof, a double-layered cake falls to the ground, and the host Noel Fielding pithily says, “Oh no, I think your cake’s just fallen”. Honestly, this is a hilariously funny opening scene. |
With this auspicious beginning, the rest of the series is equally fast-paced, funny and the martial arts fighting feels fresh. The talented cast even seem to gracefully hold the occasional dip in the telling and the tension of the series. Even these minor hiccups don’t derail this show for being completely entertaining and exciting for most part, and certainly binge-worthy. It’s best to keep aside a dedicated day, you won’t be doing anything else. The second half of The Brothers Sun does begin to get bogged down with tying up narrative loose-ends of the many enemies of the the Suns and the Jade Dragons, which ends up feeling a bit like everybody in the world. However, the show rises above these shortcomings because it manages to expand, explore and elaborate on Hollywood’s reductive Asian stereotypes: Bruce as the model minority nerd, Charles as the ruthless gangster, and Eileen as the tiger mom. At first, Yeoh’s Eileen Sun seems like a woman we’ve seen many times on our screens — the immigrant mother singularly focussed on the success of her children. Through the eight episodes, Eileen’s character arc opens up to slowly reveal her own ambitions – and her quiet, steely drive to make them a reality. While the series might find its title in its tracing of the trajectories of the odd-ball brothers, it is Yeoh’s Eileen that truly shines through and provides the solid grounding for The Brothers Sun. |
Michelle Yeoh is a star. We’ve all known it for a long, long time. At 61, she’s taken the role of mom and turned it topsy-turvy. She’s been able to remake an archetype into something amazing again. Her pitch-perfect cattiness as Eleanor Young in the Crazy Rich Asians to her sensational, stirring and striking Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once and as Eileen Sun in The Brothers Sun, Yeoh has continued to build on this role of a mother. Yeoh’s motherly figures are complicated, critical and caring but they aren’t wallflowers. Wait till Mama Sun decides to kick ass. It is a treat! The smartest thing about The Brothers Sun? It lets Michelle Yeoh take her rightful place. |
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