How would a fraught, highly-charged second of street rage proceed to linger and fester in two of essentially the most obsessive and self-destructive characters you may ever meet?

Viewers are confronted with this query proper from the opening moments of “Beef,” placing us squarely within the perspective of Yeun’s Danny Cho and instantly setting the tone for the steadily boiling cauldron of frustrations to return. Weighed down by his notion that there is all the time one thing simply ready within the wings to wreck each certainly one of his plans, Danny is drowning in dire monetary straits (largely of his personal making) and on the finish of his rope. By pure probability, the struggling handyman finds the right goal for his frustrations when he by chance backs into the trail of an oncoming SUV outdoors a division retailer … and is promptly met by the opposite irate driver’s obnoxious, extended honking and a center finger out the window, for good measure.

If Yeun has by no means appeared fairly as determined, flamable, and impotently indignant as he’s right here, then Wong is virtually a revelation for followers who could solely know her from varied stand-up comedy specials or the Netflix rom-com “At all times Be My Perhaps.” After the startlingly tense (but dryly humorous) automobile chase that follows, the deceptively diminutive Wong takes over the proceedings via sheer energy of charisma. Very quickly in any respect, she virtually effortlessly convinces us that Amy Lau, a well-off businesswoman seeking to shut a wildly profitable deal to dump her enterprise, may very well be able to imploding simply as violently as Danny.

Regardless of her picturesque life, the fractures are made readily obvious. On prime of all of the micro-aggressions that girls of coloration (particularly of Asian descent) are all too acquainted with, she should cope with her well-meaning however inattentive husband George (Joseph Lee), headstrong younger daughter June (Remy Holt), her overbearing mother-in-law Fumi (Patti Yasutake, who sinks her tooth into what might’ve been a stereotype of a task), and a precarious enterprise cope with the insufferable and fabulously rich Jordan Forster (Maria Bello) that might disintegrate on the slightest misstep.

And each step of the way in which, “Beef” turns the screws on Danny and Amy, juxtaposing their parallel journeys with each other and pushing them additional to the brink.