This series was put in several list of most anticipated in 2024 likely due to the premise and the lead star. It was released on Thursday but I came home late that night and only started to watch it on Friday & finished it yesterday. OK, why don't I just get to it then.

Brief Story Line

Charles Sun (Justin Chien - Two Sides: Unfaithful TV series etc) was the son of renowned Triad leader in Taiwan who after an incident that happened in his hometown, had to go to Los Angeles to protect his family. They were Charles' mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All at Once, A Haunting in Venice etc) and younger brother Bruce (Sam Song Li) who had little recollection of his childhood life and did not know his gangster background. 

As soon as Charles arrived in LA, it would seem that trouble followed him and he would have problem with the law, including the ambitious Deputy DA Alexis Kong (Highdee Kuan - Fear the Night etc) who was trying to expose Asian gang activities in the US. With the help from other people including Bruce's best friend TK (Joon Lee), they all had to face the dangerous persons who threatened their lives.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

When I started watching this series, I was pleasantly surprised by the opening fighting sequence by Charles Sun which was pretty entertaining to watch. Then the story moved to the Los Angeles where we were introduced with his younger brother Bruce who was a bit too naive and sometimes felt annoyingly foolish. But obviously the appearance of Michelle Yeoh as the mother was a real treat. She just oozed the aura of motherhood who we could feel had way more to offer than just a seemingly normal mother working as a nurse.

Anyway at first I felt that there was no chemistry between Charles and Bruce and to be frank I thought the pilot episode did not really inspire confidence. Luckily though as the story progressed, it did got better with more complexities to the story, more well choreographed hand to hand fights and the relationship between the brothers and their mother grew closer. There was also a surprising turn of event in episode 4, although that twist in episode 6 was not a shock to me as I could sense it from early on. That episode also felt a bit boring in the beginning but there was a really violent fight in the closing stage which I truly enjoyed.

The series had standard 8 episodes for an original Netflix series with varying duration of 47 to 69 minutes. Episode 7 would have been the very best for me had it not for the one major flaw on the action of the law enforcement. I mean come on, you could not have been relying only on 1 way to catch your target and for me it ruined that episode. Fortunately the fight scenes were awesome and worth the wait. Btw, the final episode was good as well, although I personally was not too satisfied with the ending involving one of the brothers. But I guess it served as a good enough finale, especially with that post end credit scene that looked to set up subsequent seasons (perhaps it would be renewed, however if it was not, I was quite content with it).

There was a familiar name as the creator of the series, i.e. Brad Falchuk (co-creator of famous series like Glee, American Horror Story and few others). He created this together with Byron Wu and they both were the writers of first and final episode. Aside from the cast I mentioned above,  there were also few other support characters like the LA Asian gangster May Song (Alice Hewkin - Rye Lane etc), trusted Sun family triad members Xing (comedian Jenny Yang) & Blood Boots (Jon Xue Zhang), Bruce's college friend Grace (Madison Hu - Bizaardvark TV series etc) and several others.

One thing that rather displeased me was the frequent use of songs in almost every scene, particularly in the first few episodes. Don't get me wrong, I am OK with songs in the background but having too many loud songs that made it difficult to hear people talking was not fun. I think it was on the episodes directed by Kevin Tancharoen (Fame, Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series etc) while not so much on the others directed by Viet Nguyen. Probably because of Tancharoen's background of choreographer for Madonna and directing musicals. But his experience on that Mortal Kombat certainly helped in the fight scenes with Justin Chien absolutely amazing here.

Overall to me this was quite an entertaining action black comedy series (as classified in the internet). It has some good quality fight sequence which were violent & brutal and some drama involving the family of triads combined with strong Chinese cultural background. It even had few comedic moments too (that scene in episode 3 was unexpected but hilarious at the same time). Things that made me valued the series a bit less was the terrible decision making in episode 7, too much use of songs in some episodes and the ending that was a bit too convenient. Critics seemed to enjoy the series and audience in general looked to be quite pleased as it already made into top 10 in several countries including Indonesia. So if you like the attributes I mentioned and have no issues with things I felt were shortcomings, then you would be entertained by this.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars