Quick, name the two American movies that opened in August with Asian stars, an Asian-American director and an unexpected level of financial success?

No credit for guessing “Crazy Rich Asians” which rightly has been hogging headlines for its groundbreaking social and box-office impact since its Aug. 15 opening. The first mainstream Hollywood film in a quarter-century with an all-Asian cast has hauled in more than $117 million from more than 3,000 screens domestically and is now the most successful rom-com in nearly a decade.

But it’s the other film, an indie that opened in just nine theaters Aug. 24, before expanding to more than 1,200 screens last weekend, that in its quiet way may turn out to be more earth and glass-ceiling shattering. “Searching,” directed and co-written by Aneesh Chaganty, stars John Cho as a single father desperately looking for his teenage daughter who has gone missing, and it’s told entirely from the point-of-view of his online searches and social media.

It’s the latter element that is at the forefront of the movie’s media coverage; some are even hailing “Searching” as being at the vanguard of a new trend called “laptop cinema” which also includes the “Unfriended” horror franchise.

But it’s the earlier part of that sentence — “stars John Cho” — that may be more instructive. Korean-American Cho is a talented, versatile actor who is best-known for goofy comedy (the “Harold & Kumar” movies), portraying Sulu in the rebooted “Star Trek” franchise and an entire network’s worth of largely forgotten TV shows (“Selfie,” “FlashForward,” “Go On,” “Difficult People”).

RELATED: 'Searching' ups the ante for social-media films.

But the 46-year-old was not considered dramatic, big-screen, leading-man material because, in Hollywood’s traditional arcane cultural calculus, an Asian-American leading man didn’t add up. “Leading man” implies a sense of virility and agency often denied Asian-American men in movies who — from Long Duk Dong in “Sixteen Candles” to Mr. Chow in “The Hangover” — often were played for embarrassment and emasculation.

Cho proved he could more than hold his own in this area in last year’s gorgeously crafted “Columbus,” where he plays the son of a prominent architect who develops a relationship with a younger woman.But it was a studied art house film that landed in theaters with little advance word and disappeared as quickly as an ice cube on summer asphalt (it is now available for streaming though, and is highly recommended).

Conversely, “Searching,” which won the Sundance festival’s Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and Audience Award this year, isn’t withering in the marketing shadows. It’s getting a solid push from Screen Gems and that effort is paying off: In its first weekend of limited release in nine theaters, “Searching” had an enviable $40,000-per-screen average while, after expanding nationally over Labor Day weekend, it beat expectations by bringing in $7.7 million.

RELATED: Behind the screens with the director of 'Searching.'

What multiplex audiences are discovering is a three-dimensional, fully formed character in Cho’s David Kim with whom they can relate. It’s assumed that Kim, a Silicon Valley software engineer, makes a comfortable living but he isn’t swaddled in the gilded, Singaporean opulence of “Crazy Rich Asians” — a designer-label dreamworld that may be aspirational for many viewers yet reality for very few. Anyone of any culture, color, or class can connect with Kim’s nightmare: turning around to find that your loved one seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth.

And Kim’s not alone. There’s his brother, Peter (Joseph Lee), wife Pamela (Sara Sohn), and, of course, missing daughter Margot (Michelle La). Yet, whereas “Crazy Rich Asians” makes a spectacle of its Asian-ness, “Searching” makes those distinctions invisible — it’s never emphasized — and, by doing so, strikes a blow against the rusting stereotype of what an “American” family looks like.

“Searching” comes in the wake of the flirtation between Korean-American Steven Yeun and African-American Tessa Thompson in the summer indie film “Sorry to Bother You” and a month before Cho stars with Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz in the political comedy “The Oath,” opening Oct. 12. It’s these lower-key, less hyped representations of Asian-American humanity that may ultimately prove more radical.

This isn’t to say “Searching” is more valuable than “Crazy Rich Asians.” Both are serving their purpose in ripping away the blinders that have kept Asian-Americans in general and Asian-American men in particular out of the glare of the Hollywood spotlight as anything but comedic sidekicks or one-dimensional martial-arts masters.

“Searching” shows that Hollywood doesn’t need to wait for the next “Crazy Rich Asians” — a culturally specific event film with a relatively big budget, the imprimatur of an international bestseller, and a promotional treasure chest equivalent to the GDP of a small country — to tell stories with Asian characters. They just need stories.

cary.darling@chron.com