The first voice you hear in Taiwanese American gangster comedy-drama The Brothers Sun? Sandi Toksvig, going on about chocolate cake. In a pristine penthouse in Taipei, The Great British Bake Off is playing in the background while the apartment’s owner carefully constructs his own showstopper, delicately dipping a cocktail stick into a layer of sponge before deciding it’s not quite baked and returning it to a hot oven. At that moment, three masked assassins burst in and try to kill him. At the end of the hand-to-hand combat, they are dead and he is not but he’s still furious: they’ve distracted him for too long. The cake’s burnt!
The baker is Charles Sun (Justin Chien), the son of Taiwan’s top crime boss and a powerful mobster in his own right. When the attack turns out to be part of a wider assault on his family, Charles is tasked with protecting the forgotten wing of the clan, his mother and brother, who are living normal lives in Los Angeles. His relocation, pursued by the Suns’ vicious Taiwanese enemies, prompts an action comedy with a big Jackie Chan influence that gets a lot of juice out of variations on that opening gag: tough gangster business butting up against the mundanity of everyday life.
