“The Brothers Sun” is Not Your Mother’s Gangster Show

Netflix’s action comedy series “The Brothers Sun” is delicious. Not only is it action-packed, hilarious, and thrilling, it is brain candy with its nuanced depictions of the myriad identities and loyalties pulling at Asians and Asian Americans. It is my favorite kind of show: using a sexy hook like gangsters to discuss deeper issues, such as conflicting values of family versus self, duty versus freedom, power versus service, community versus individuality, and love versus hate.

The story revolves around the newly reunited Sun brothers: legendary killer Charles “Chairleg” Sun (Justin Chien) and soft, aspiring improv actor Bruce (Sam Song Li). When their father, the powerful Taiwanese triad leader Big Sun (Johnny Kou), is shot by a mysterious assassin, older brother Charles is sent to Los Angeles to protect his mother, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and his sheltered younger brother. They must all work together to figure out who is systematically targeting their family, while dealing with the fallout of being separated for 15 years. One problem: Bruce has been kept deliberately in the dark all these years about what his family really does. 

Subverting the Asian Gangster Stereotype

The Asian gangster genre is a double-edged sword. The action, violence, grit, loyalty, intrigue, and forbidden aspects draw me in and keep me rapt. I am a complete sucker for them. Alternatively, it is often rife with stereotypes, shoehorning Asian and Asian American stories into the narrow world of tongs, triads, yakuzas, and Khangpaes. For too long, gangsters, human trafficking victims, martial artists, and nerds were the only faces of Asians in western media, and I longed for shows about “real” Asian American people bumbling about in their boring lives just like mine, except funnier and better-looking. 

What a delight it is to have both. 

The series uses the gangster trope to showcase so many of our different Asian American stories. Interspersed between the extraordinary circumstances of assassins, triads, and extreme wealth are mundane stories of school and home life, focusing on the ordinary interactions between generations of Asians. Like many shows with intergenerational casts, it illustrates the required conflict between duty to family and duty to one’s self in an immigrant family. But the show also accurately captures a crackling energy between siblings, Asian American friendships, love interests, and colleagues.

“The Brothers Sun” shows off a wide range of Asian American lives and occupations: not only the gangster underbelly and nightlife of Los Angeles, but also students, nurses, restaurant workers, businesspeople, lawyers, law enforcement, medical examiners, families, and of course, professional killers. Rooted in the San Gabriel Valley, the show presents a richly articulated world inhabited by real people — some of whom perhaps defy the laws of fighting physics.

This is the brilliant art that can happen when you have an all-Asian writer’s room. “We also made an effort to find not just Chinese American or Taiwanese American writers, but Korean American writers, and writers who were adopted at an early age,” explains Executive Producer Byron Wu. “It was important for us to be able to speak to the Asian American experience. We’re specific with the details of our show, but we also want that specificity to reach a broader audience.” 

More Reasons to Love “The Brothers Sun”

Of course, representation on and off screen is well and good, but is the show any good? 

Yes. Emphatically, yes.

“The Brothers Sun” is so, so funny. The cut scenes are brilliantly timed, the banter is clever and rhythmic, the action sequences are exciting and often hilarious, with a few standout segments that had me screaming with laughter. (Most notably, there is a scene with people in inflatable dinosaur costumes fighting with machetes. Yes, it is every bit as awesome as it sounds.) But like all great comedy, the reason it sells is because the actors are wholly into the reality of their absurd situation.

Bruce is our audience stand-in, and Li imbues him with such endearing, golden retriever energy. He, like us, is struggling to get up to speed and navigate this new world. He is equal parts horrified and ecstatic by the developments in his life. As for his older brother Charles, Chien plays him with such intensity and focus. He is completely believable as the conflicted older brother with so much of his family’s expectations on his shoulders. 

Of course, Yeoh is amazing as Eileen, but that is to be expected. In scenes where she is both so tough and vulnerable, we see her trembling almost imperceptibly, giving Eileen a softness in her otherwise badass exterior. And though we don’t see Kou as much on the screen, his scenes are powerfully rendered, reminding me of the authority, disappointment, and gruff affection of the archetypal Asian dad.

I was initially concerned that so many of the side characters seemed to be criminally underused (yes, pun intended). But then, I realized all the side characters are fantastic. (My children particularly loved a few of the side characters more than some of the main leads, and I don’t blame them!) They cannot possibly all be used to their full extent. 

I would also be remiss not to mention the fantastic fight sequences, of which each episode has at least one. Even Yeoh says the stunt scenes had her saying, “Wow, this is stunning!” They’re reminiscent of the best Hong Kong action flicks and are not only stirring, they’re often imaginative and tongue-in-cheek. 

She adds, “Our directors, Kevin Tancharoen and Viet Nguyen, handle the intensity of the drama and the choreography of the action with such finesse that you are on the edge of your seat but wondering, ‘Why am I laughing at this?’ It’s a violent, but fun and funny series. It’s a big shot of adrenaline.”

Granted, there are moments where you’re reminded that this could never happen in real life, but that’s what we expect from this genre. What’s a little imperviousness to bullets, choosing hand-to-hand combat when guns are available, and one person prevailing against 20 when it’s awesome to look at — am I right?

The soundtrack is fire, too, acting as another character making pointed commentary on the side. “I didn’t want to rely on choosing needle drops in post. I wanted to strive to make something that felt bespoke,” explains Tancharoen.

I love it. I want Season 2. (Make sure you watch to the end of the credits in the last episode!) The more I think about the show, the more deeply I appreciate its many layers, secrets, and complicated web of human relationships. It’s fantastic. 

Our Multiple and Conflicting Identities

I could stop here, and the series would be good — possibly great — but what I loved most about “The Brothers Sun” is its discourse on the multitude of identities that we each possess and what it means to be true to ourselves. 

The show constantly explores the nuance in how immigrant children and their parents box the other into ill-fitting roles that are incapable of encompassing them in whole. There is a repeated motif of characters asking or telling someone who they are. Regardless of how long they’ve known each other, characters are asking others (and themselves) to qualify, quantify, and identify who they are, who they were, who they want to be, and who they will choose to be. 

While we’re supposed to identify with either of the brothers Sun, because of my age and life stage, I find myself relating far more to Mama Sun. Her character arc, her choices and motivations — not only do they have consequences for herself, but they shape the direction and lives of her children. Through Eileen (and to a lesser extent, Big Sun), we see how parents both protect and trap their children (perhaps in the same breath and action). We see how to let our children go and gain independence, the cost of that individuality, how our choices come home to roost, and how we can live with people their entire lives and still, they cannot see us clearly. 

Netflix’s eight-episode “The Brothers Sun” was released on Jan. 4, 2024. Check out the trailer here.

Image credits: Netflix