It’s a troublesome world for women in motion movies and tv shows. They’re continuously relegated to considered one of two tropes: the dime piece that the man has to avenge or rescue, or the badass girlboss whipping her hair around as she kicks bad guys in the genitals, all while wearing skintight jeans and the most revealing of tops. They’re either dead or shagging a hot guy—they usually’re almost at all times missing any sense of interiority or backstory, let alone dialogue that real people would ever say.
But then, every occasionally, you get a show like The Brothers Sun, one which prompts women in every single place to throw up their hands and shout, “Finally! Was that really so hard?!”
On its surface, the Netflix series looks like just one other addition to an extended line of typical action-comedy creations. You start with two brothers, separated of their youth, one raised in Taipei with their triad-boss dad to be a killing machine, the other raised in Los Angeles with their mom to grow to be a health care provider. One brother is goofy and incompetent; the other is stone cold and perpetually annoyed. (I’ll allow you to guess which one is which.) When shots are taken at Dad, the killing-machine brother, named Charles (played by Justin Chien), involves L.A. to guard Mom, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and his brother, Bruce (Sam Song Li). Hijinks ensue.
What makes The Brothers Sun so unique is that, while it operates in the largely male space of hard motion with a heavy splash of comedy, a overwhelming majority of its plot is driven by the female characters. The women are not only token accomplices, either, in a departure from motion comedies which have a minimum of done higher than typically masculine hard-action shows (Jack Ryan, Reacher, SEAL Team, Strike Back, etc.) by throwing in a perennially exasperated, smart female sidekick. (Think: Remington Steele, Get Smart, Chuck.) In the first episode, The Brothers Sun draws you in with the expectation that the odd-couple brothers will likely be our sole focus. Then Michelle Yeoh, as “Mama” Sun, dons a shower cap and pulls out a drill to do away with a corpse.
Every woman wants something on this show. They’re not the girlfriends staying at home or yelling at their man, nag style, to choose from them and whatever his mission is. While a few of their motives may not at all times be original, considering the staples of the genre, they are novel in that they’re motivations that are typically reserved for men. For instance, halfway into Episode 1, we get an excellent, dizzying performance by Alice Hewkin as May, a pigtailed, manically joyful drug lord who can flip a switch to menacing at the drop of a hat. May is gone too soon, but her sister June (also played by Hewkin) picks up the mantle and sets out to assist the brothers with the intention to avenge her sister’s murder. Then there’s the character Xing, played by Jenny Yang, who works as muscle for triad leader Big Sun (Johnny Kou). She’s loyal to a fault in a takes-no-prisoners way, following in the footsteps of characters like Paulie Walnuts in The Sopranos. But what makes her so compelling is her ability to indicate humanity in the face of her loyalty—she’s no action-fighter Barbie, she’ll still kill you, but Yang plays her with a component of long-since-hardened-over pathos that does quite a bit in her short amount of screen time.
Even the supposed love interests are given more interesting stories and depth than what they could get in typical motion fare. Initially playing the a part of the love interest to the innocent Bruce, Madisen Hu’s Grace is revealed to be behind an intricate plot to wipe out all the triads. Why? Not to avenge a romantic partner or for power, but because her family had been trafficked by a triad. Compelling stuff. In an identical vein, Charles’ love interest is an old friend from Taiwan, and, despite the show having little or no understanding of what a state prosecutor can actually do (not query witnesses and defendants, for one!), it’s refreshing to see her prioritize her ambitions somewhat than her love life. Does she have romantic feelings for Charles? Sure. Does she ever let that get in the way of her profession goals? Not really!
The women of this show are outsmarting the men at every turn, which brings us back to Michelle Yeoh’s Mama Sun. After spending the front half of the season showing off her competence for eliminating bodies and using aunties to uncover truths, Eileen reveals her ultimate aim as the triads begin to disintegrate: She desires to instill herself as the Dragon Head, or the leader of all the triads. As she—wearing white, no less!—walks right into a covert meeting made up exclusively of men in dark clothes and menacing scowls, it becomes very clear who has been pulling the strings the whole time.
When Bruce tries to compel Eileen to stop her quest to grow to be against the law boss—telling her, “You’re my mom. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to that? To how things were?”—Eileen delivers as near an anthem for women as has ever been realized in an motion show. She screams, “Not once did anyone ask what I wanted! I want what is mine, Bruce! I want what I have earned!”
It’s beautiful. It’s poetry.
Credit : slate.com
