Sasie Sealy’s debut feature follows a Chinese-American widow in New York City who maintains her cool even in the middle of a gangland war.Leading roles for women of a certain age may be thin on the ground, but leading roles for Asian women — of any age — are practically nonexistent. Lucky Grandma, the debut feature from Sasie Sealy, proves the exception to both rules, gifting veteran actress Tsai Chin (The Joy Luck Club, Casino Royale) the kind of character that would be easy to overplay in lesser hands. The story of a charmingly irascible New York pensioner who finds herself caught between two Chinatown gangs after she swipes a bag of cash that doesn’t belong to her, the film features hardly any spoken English at all, and very amusingly captures a hermetic immigrant culture in which nobody so much as considers calling the police. The filmmaker, whose credits include several shorts as well as work on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, demonstrates a deft control of tone throughout, balancing d…
