The Brothers Sun review: Netflix’s action-packed series is a worthy vehicle for Michelle Yeoh

Michelle Yeoh has made a name for herself on the big screen, having become the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2023. But in recent years, the Malaysian-born actor has ventured into television, intent on playing different kinds of characters across multiple episodes. After playing a Starfleet captain and ruthless emperor (Star Trek: Discovery), a green-eyed elf (The Witcher: Blood Origin), and the Chinese goddess of mercy (American Born Chinese), Yeoh takes on her most down-to-earth TV role to date as an immigrant single mother in The Brothers Sun.

Created by Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story, Pose, 9-1-1) and Byron Wu, the new eight-episode action-dramedy series, which premieres January 4 on Netflix, has an intriguing premise: When the kingpin of a powerful Taiwanese triad (Johnny Kou) is shot by a mysterious assassin, his older son, Charles Sun (Justin Chien), travels to Los Angeles to reunite with and protect his shrewd mother, Eileen (Yeoh), and naïve younger brother, Bruce (Sam Song Li), who has grown up blissfully unaware of his family’s business dealings. But as Taipei’s deadliest criminal societies and a new rising organization go head-to-head for dominance, Charles, Bruce, and Eileen must come back together—and reckon with their own hopes and dreams—before one of their enemies kills them all and usurps their family’s position at the top of the food chain.

Conceived by an all-Asian writers’ room (with the exception of Falchuk) and shot in Los Angeles and Taiwan, TBS offers a compelling portrait of a fractured Asian family, in which the younger generation must balance the cultural expectations of duty and tradition instilled by the old guard with their growing desire to carve out their own place in the world. Despite being born to the same parents, Charles and Bruce have not seen each other for the last 15 years, and their radically different upbringings generate natural conflict throughout the first season. Groomed to be his father’s heir apparent, Charles has developed a reputation for being a notorious killer in Taiwan (his “Chairleg” nickname refers to the makeshift weapon he used for his first kill), but he secretly loves watching daytime soaps and harbors dreams of stepping away from his life of crime and opening his own bakery. Bruce, meanwhile, is a pre-med student who has been using his college tuition money to pay for improv classes, unbeknownst to Eileen, a nurse who holds the secrets of all the Suns’ rival gangs back home in Taiwan.

It would be easy for some viewers to draw parallels between Eileen and Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once, but doing so would overlook the fact that Eileen is anything but an ordinary immigrant mother like Evelyn. While she initially left Taiwan to protect herself and her younger son, Eileen, who is a crime boss in her own right, is forced to reckon with the life she left behind—and the traditional values that forced her to play second fiddle to her estranged husband—when her elder son re-enters her life. Astute and resourceful, Eileen is able to use her local contacts to gain intel about the inner workings of Chinatown and even has to remind Charles (who you’d think would already know) that her mahjong club is actually “a complex network of relationships, favors, and debts.” Yeoh’s Eileen captures the tendency that Asian parents have to shield their children from any unpleasant things that are happening around them—and this is used as a semi-plausible reason for why she chose to keep such a huge secret from Bruce over the years. (But are we really supposed to believe that Bruce, who remembers core memories from his childhood with Charles in Taiwan, never asked his mother about the rest of their family? That detail never really comes up in the first season.)

Yeoh’s screen presence allows her to imbue each of her characters with a special kind of gravitas. But the last three episodes in particular allow her to combine the hallmarks that make her such a great actor: her subtlety of emotion, especially when her character is under duress and forced to deal with issues beyond her control; her ability to tell a story through movement; and her comedic timing. It is a shame, then, that Yeoh is not given an opportunity to flex all three of those muscles at the same time until the story hurtles toward its conclusion. One could argue that giving Yeoh a single fight scene ultimately underscores the emotional potency of that moment, but writing Eileen as an unflappable matriarch known for her keen observation skills effectively wipes away any opportunity for Yeoh to participate in the action unless Eileen is trying to protect one of her sons. And it is clear that she has a favorite (for now at least.)

For a show that reiterates almost ad nauseam the idea of 保护家人 (bǎo hù jiā rén), or “protecting one’s family,” it comes as little surprise that TBS is strongest when it keeps the focus on the core family unit. Li offers a lot of the comedic relief in the series. His character functions as the audience’s conduit into this dangerous world, white-knuckling every twist and turn in the story. Whether or not Yeoh asked to keep her own stunts to a minimum, the end result means that the bulk of the fight scenes fell under the responsibility of Chien, who is the show’s real revelation. Charles is bound by loyalty to his domineering father, but there are some lines that he cannot cross in good conscience. In addition to diving head-first (sometimes literally) into the action, Chien effectively conveys Charles’ inner turmoil throughout the season. It is difficult to not root for his character to make amends with his mother and brother and branch out away from his father, even if being a gangster is such a core part of his identity.

Yeoh, Chien, and Li gel together convincingly as mother and sons and are left to do much of the heavy lifting, but they are ultimately underserved by the mixed bag of supporting actors and certain creative choices in the second half of the season. While some performers (especially Jon Xue Zhang’s Blood Boots) are able to capture both the dark humor and life-and-death stakes of this fictional world, others do not have the range to combine comedy and drama, resulting in flat, one-note turns that give away some of the show’s twists. Some characters, including Bruce’s ditzy and useless friend (Joon Lee), could be removed without affecting the plot and frankly are not missed during their long absences in the story.

Bruce gives an impassioned speech in the third episode about the need to understand people’s motivations. But as the characters get deeper into the plot, those motivations become muddied. Although the story never completely spirals out of control and remains watchable, the writers seem to have written themselves into corners and chosen the most outlandish resolutions they can think of. And this results in a jarring tonal shift in the final two installments. Bruce undoes a lot of his own development by making questionable decisions that not only show how little he has learned from his brief time in the criminal underworld but also how naïve he still is. There does not need to be a sizable shift in the character, but at least one that shows he is aware of what is at stake and better able to handle and comport himself. For instance, how many times do we have to listen to him complain about going back to the illusion of a simple life that no longer exists? How many times does Li have to cry in the finale to convey how his character is feeling? The writers could have leaned further into the gory action-comedy of the earlier episodes, but they (and the directors) have chosen to straddle an uncomfortable middle ground that feels more and more like a family melodrama. Don’t get me wrong: Melodrama, if done well, can be extremely effective, but it overwhelms the comedy that works so well in the early episodes and undermines the emotional weight of this particular tale.

Nevertheless, at a time when Asians have never been more prominent in Hollywood, TBS must be acknowledged as part of a growing wave of stories that honor the specificities of the Asian-American experience. Special attention has clearly been paid to nailing culturally specific details: the seamless switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and English in the household; the depictions of mouthwatering Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine; taking off shoes at the door; and the reverence for elders. Despite a few foibles in its execution, The Brothers Sun is notable for its diversity of Asian characters, who run the gamut from (anti)hero to villain, making this action-packed dramedy series, all in all, a worthy star vehicle for Yeoh.

The Brothers Sun premieres January 4 on Netflix