The Brothers Sun(Netflix, 8 Episodes)
Starring Michelle Yeoh, Justin Chien, Sam Song Li
Rating: *** ½
When I began bingeing on The Brothers Sun Netflix’s blockbuster series, I expected a gruesome violent gangster series replacing the male Mafioso with a female.Big deal!
But hang on! The Brothers Sun is indeed a big deal which makes us squeal. It is a wild, seriously funny serious with some grim undertones on family values and loyalty, all jammed into a tale that once told cannot be forgotten.
The wonderful Michelle Yeoh who has over the years captured the seat of Asia’s most influential actor, is cast as the matriarch of a mafia family who has moved away from the family business in Taiwan to Los Angeles with her younger son to keep him protected from a life of crime while the elder son stayed back with Dad and the family business.
This may sound like a grim Ram-Lakhan theme to hang a lengthy series on. Here’s where this spankingly written series(take a bow for the wow, writers Bryan Wu, Brad Falchuk , etc) takes us by surprise. For turning the grim into the grin, the series must be lauded in the loudest voice. I can’t recall any series in recent memory which has had so much fun with violence ,including an episode wherein a man’s severed head stares with a shocked expression from a bag .
Even if you abhor the the gore,it needn’t be a bore in the right hands.Not even when the series spawns eight episodes. It is widely noticed that the Indian web content frequently goes wrong for stretching the plot endurance. In The Brothers Sun not even a minute is wasted in hemming and hawing, so that we are left with what seems to be a series spun out of the finest ‘ilk’. Taiwanese of course.
There were plotpoints where I found myself laughing out loud. The mob scenes are especially funny with the mobsters posing as dangerous,only to have their vanity punctured by writers who refuse to take them seriously. There is a chilling yet hilarious combat in a sauna bath where a mafia baba whispers something in chaste Taiwanese to our crime-free young hero Bruce(Sam Song Li who never stops being funny even when he stops being funny) , Michelle Yeoh’s younger over-protected son.
But the real hero is Yeoh’s elder unsmiling son Charles(Justin Chein)whose grimace is a separate characters altogether , just like Michelle Yoeh’s kitchen wisdom, and Bruce’s love interest Grace(Madison Hu)’s grin.
Jenny Yang as a family friend Xing,is a hoot.Seeing Grace slobbering over Bruce, Xing comments, “If I were you I would have had sex with her multiple times.”Such indecorous lines are delivered with such endearing impunity , the narration feels free of any luridity .
The writing is remarkably upbeat and humorous right till the end . The acting is firstrate, not just Yeoh, who let me warn you is not as omnipresent in the series as expected) but also Justin Chien and Sam Song Li as her two sons. The latter’s Bruce-in-wonderland act will remind you of the young Jackie Chan.
There are almost 40 songs carpeting the soundtrack with a sassy sonority that salutes both the youth and the seniority of the characters.
But the real scenestealer of the show is the writing. Every scene sparkles with wit and a wherewithal that comes close to wisdom. Not an ounce of extra flesh in the eight episodes,is not just a relief. It’s a miracle!
