The Brothers Sun Review: Brad Falchuck Reworks the Myth Of The Godfather With An Asian Twist
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Justin Chien, Sam Song Li, Highdee Kuan, Joon Lee
Created By: Byron Wu, Brad Falchuck
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
The eight episodes of The Brothers Sun, the action/dark comedy series created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk, can be found on Netflix from January 4th. That is to say, ten months after the most important night of Michelle Yeoh’s career. She was an action star before, the Academy didn’t invent her prestige, but the Oscar for Best Leading Actress won for Everything Everywhere All at Once has shuffled the cards and raised every imaginable bar. A question of appeal: if before many people knew her name, now almost everyone knows her name. After the resounding success of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh chooses Netflix as the home of her new American project. Still, she always remains faithful to her Asian origins and the stories that make her proud. After obtaining a historic Oscar as best leading actress for the Daniels’ film (the first Asian performer to receive it), Yeoh becomes the protagonist of The Brothers Sun, a Netflix series composed of eight episodes and created in tandem by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuck, the latter is a frequent collaborator of Ryan Murphy and co-creator of American Horror Story.
For Netflix, 2024 opened under the banner of action with one of the most anticipated series of the year, an action gangster starring Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. Let’s talk about The Brothers Sun, a dark comedy that alternates family drama with kicks and punches, telling a story of criminals, victims, and the power struggle. And it is precisely this that immediately turned the spotlight on this Netflix series which would open the new serial season of the streaming platform with a bang, at least apparently. But today that we have seen this series, can we say it deserved so much hype? The Brothers Sun on Netflix, is it better to watch it or avoid it? The Brothers Sun, very wisely, makes it the apex of its narrative pyramid. It is the story of a mother and her two children, oppressed by an impalpable and dark threat. Defined, in their respective personalities, in such a rigorous way that it borders on the stereotype, but perhaps it is inevitable: one is a murderer, the other a friendly goofball.
The Brothers Sun Review: The Story Plot
In Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, the head of one of the most important triads (the triad is the Chinese criminal organization) is hit. The boss’s son, Charles (Justin Chien), is taken aback. The attack has an unusual modus operandi, and the motivations are unclear. This is why he takes the extreme step of flying to Los Angeles to visit the mother he hasn’t seen for years. Her name is Eileen (Yeoh), she was once central to the organization, but she has been out of the picture for a long time. Eileen left Charles and her husband in Taiwan, but she went to America with her youngest son, Bruce (Sam Song Li). Bruce knows little or nothing about crimes and misdeeds. He studies at university and is unable to pay the tuition because he secretly uses the money his mother gave him to take part in an improvisation course, his great passion. If Charles is a cold and implacable death machine, Bruce is the gangster equivalent of a stuffed animal.
The narrative alchemy of The Brothers Sun is deliberately built on the encounter between opposite characters (flavors) and philosophies. Bruce is shy and harmless, perhaps a little soft, but with a solid moral sense. Charles is lucid, an incomparable fighter, always in control of the situation but ethically dazed, incapable of feeling emotions. Eileen knows how to navigate the criminal underworld and at the same time keep her youngest son away from dangerous streets. She is empathetic, but also authoritarian and obsessed with control. This is the character map at the beginning of the story. The threat to the Sun clan – particularly insidious precisely because it is not clear where it comes from and what the objective is – forces them to look inside themselves, to re-discuss their roles, and to try to change: Eileen, “letting go” of the two boys; Bruce, who hates weapons and violence, accepting a side of life that he would have gladly done without; Charles, finding a hint of his lost innocence. The series makes them evolve by desecrating the action with an ironic look and coloring normality with anxiety and suspense.
The Brothers Sun Review and Analysis
Many will tell you that The Brothers Sun is a derivative serial. And they would tell you the truth, even if this might sound more like a negative value to you than an added one. Instead, the small screen creature created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuck exploits to the maximum power all the elements and stylistic features of the past to which it refers to create an unexpectedly ironic, extremely smooth, and highly entertaining TV series. All values , in a current panorama in which the production of television series is so vast that quality is often lacking, are essential bricks to support the foundations of a clear and effective narrative. Which is not at all obvious. What is certain is that the greatest inspirations of The Brothers Sun are, clearly, the tales of the mafia and the underworld that have embellished international cinema in the past: above all, we immediately think of The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola and at most recently The Family, from 2013.
The Netflix series takes up the cliché of the family, of the transition of power between a boss-dad and a reluctant son. Of Besson’s underrated black comedy with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, The Brothers Sun on the other hand almost seems to keep intact the sharp irony, the light-hearted hilarity with which it mocks elements and situations that have now become recurrent and taken for granted in the crime genre, both in the cinema than in the most recent television. Homage and suggestions that go well with the true ambition of The Brothers Sun: to tell on the small screen the adaptability and process of cultural assimilation of the vast Asian community in the United States of America. Through the narrative thread of a family history of crime, tension, and adrenaline pumping, the series co-created by Wu and Falchuck seems to ideally pair with Beef, also on Netflix.
If the latter, a self-contained miniseries with Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, dared to talk about the contradictions and gray areas of the South Korean community in the USA through the lens of pure and harsh black comedy, The Brothers Sun chooses the path of pure entertainment to convey messages and subtexts of similar effectiveness. A multi-layered project embellished (ça va sans dire) by the stage presence and the female character of Eileen Sun, played by Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. After the glories and unexpected success of Everything Everywhere All at Once, she confirms herself once again as an unattainable Asian interpreter capable of gathering with a simple glance the total attention of the spectators of the product to which she decides to lend the unlimited talent of her. Even in The Brothers Sun, we are all crazy about Michelle Yeoh, once again.
The tension that agitates Bruce and Charles, beyond the criminal novel that is their life, has a universal scope. It is the will to realize oneself, regardless of the inputs of the environment, family pressure, and the conformist push of society. Charles didn’t make it, the responsibilities of the triad (and his father’s diktats) made him a man-machine hybrid, but maybe there’s still time. Trusting in Bruce’s naivety, immature and very naive, but that he has found a way to be what he wants by rebelling secretly, in the shadows. Justin Chien and Sam Song Li find the truth of the relationship between the two different brothers (it is the trauma of the migrant identity, always poised between two worlds) pushing to the maximum on characters as distant as the sea that separates Taiwan from the United States: cold and implacable, the first. Exuberant and clumsy, but brilliant on his terms, the second. The mix of action and humor does not serve Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk only to refresh the walls of an overused genre (crime) or to give a little flavor to an otherwise flat family chronicle; the DNA of real life is made up of equal parts laughter and melancholy, action and stasis.
It is difficult to achieve a stable balance and in fact, The Brothers Sun stands out for its discontinuous, fragmented character and not in the best sense; when he hits though, he does it great. The series is at its best when it tries to insinuate a note of suspense and sinister anxiety into the story of the Sun family’s daily life. On the contrary, the humorous rereading of the codes and conventions of the crime genre is effective but only at times. It works, Michelle Yeoh. She doesn’t need to act, plastically, like her two boys. His interpretation is a matter of charismatic impassivity shattered here and there by flashes of pure emotion. She’s a mother and a born leader who tries to keep it all together while hiding a turbulent heart behind a mask of control and (semi) icy impassivity. She works by subtraction, in the absence (of words and actions), to tell us the truth about herself. A subtlety brought as a gift by time, by experience, by the confidence that comes from success. The Brothers Sun tells very well how far its protagonist’s career is.
Although the attempt to insert psychological elements into the story is appreciable, such as the personal growth of some characters, the analysis of mother-son or older brother-younger brother family relationships, the reflection on the role of pain in the development of a person’s character and that pinch of irony thrown here and there, overall The Brothers Sun is a series that struggles to pierce the screen and be memorable. Many episodes are slow, excessively descriptive, waiting for a plot development that never manages to arrive, to involve, and does not repay the viewer for the eternal wait for something interesting to happen.
Ultimately, The Brothers Sun is a highly entertaining serial product, that does not disdain the easy paths of black comedy, irony, action, and violence; all founding elements of the crime genre both yesterday and today at the cinema and on television, and which the show co-written by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuck celebrates and celebrates thanks to a simply attractive narrative structure and a cast, except Michelle Yeoh, perfectly immersed in their roles; starting from the excellent Justin Chien and Sam Song Li, respectively in the roles of Charles and Brian Sun. Arriving on Netflix starting from Thursday 4 January with all eight episodes of which it is composed already available for viewing, it could be the first “sleeper hit” of the winter 2024 season for the streaming platform.
The Brothers Sun Review: The Last Words
The Netflix series created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuck reworks the myth of The Godfather with an Asian twist. There’s action, there’s irony and there’s adrenaline. And above all, the cast also includes Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, who justifies the eight episodes thanks to her verve and stage presence. A series that is discontinuous in its effects but interesting in its proposal, The Brothers Sun has the courage of a radical representation even in these (at least superficially) inclusive times: Chinese and Korean, of white America you will only find a marginal trace at the edges of the frame. A reflection on the traps of non-harmonization of communities in the multi-ethnic United States? Probably, but certainly, it is also the pride of storytelling, that of the couple Wu and Falchuk, who have it in their heads to tell stories that are “other than the standard.
The Brothers Sun Review: Brad Falchuck Reworks the Myth Of The Godfather With An Asian Twist - Filmyhype
Director: Byron Wu, Brad Falchuck
Date Created: 2024-01-04 18:33
3.5
Pros
- High-octane action sequences: The show's fight choreography is being praised for its creativity, with Justin Chien's portrayal of Charles Sun as a ruthless killer delivering some truly impressive stunts.
- Michelle Yeoh is phenomenal: As Mama Sun, Yeoh brings her signature charisma and gravitas to the role, providing the show with a strong emotional anchor.
- Unique blend of comedy and drama: The show manages to balance its often violent subject matter with humor and heart, keeping the tone fresh and engaging.
- Diverse cast and representation: "The Brothers Sun" features a predominantly Asian cast and creators, offering a welcome change from the usual Hollywood landscape.
Cons
- Pacing issues: Some viewers have found the show's pacing to be uneven, with the plot dragging in certain parts.
- Predictable plot: The overall story may feel familiar to those who have seen other crime dramas, with some twists and turns being easy to anticipate.
- Character development could be deeper: While the main characters are engaging, some critics argue that they could benefit from more nuanced development.
- Violence might not be for everyone: The show features graphic violence, which may not be suitable for all viewers.
