You know that time is passing when one of your favourite Bond girls is playing a grandmother.

Back in 1967, Tsai Chin, played the Bond bed mate at the beginning of You Only Live Twice and uttered the delicious line about very best duck. In 2006, she was playing poker with James Bond in Casino Royale. Now, in 2020, she is the titular LUCKY GRANDMA, an off the wall comedy written by Angela Cheng and Sasie Sealy

Set in the heart of New York’s Chinatown, LUCKY GRANDMA has Tsai Chin playing an ornery, chain-smoking, newly widowed octogenarian Grandmother eager to live life as an independent woman, despite the worry of her family.

When a local fortune teller predicts a most auspicious day in her future, Grandma decides to head to the casino and goes all in, only to land herself on the wrong side of luck, suddenly attracting the attention of some local gangsters.

Desperate to protect herself, Grandma employs the services of a bodyguard from a rival gang, the appropriately named Big Pong, and soon finds herself right in the middle of a Chinatown gang war.

Big Pong becomes her surrogate son, a pet puppy of mastiff size, a gentle giant with an appetite for noodles and dim sim rather than strong arm stand over.

LUCK GRANDMA may have a plot line as thin as consomme but is beefed up by the cavalcade of characters and consummate performances.

Tsai Chin is marvellous as the crusty, cantankerous crone who still honours the home made shrine to her late husband even though the recently departed stiffed her out of a comfortable retirement, a situation that has precipitated her present plight and placed her grandson in mortal jeopardy.

Hsiao-Yuan Ha is cheerfully charming as Little Pong, the gormless, gourmand granny bodyguard.

Co-writer, Sasie Sealy, makes her feature directorial debut with LUCKY GRANDMA and shows a sure hand in juxtaposing comedy, drama and action.

Miss LUCKY GRANDMA? You should be so unlucky.