The Forbidden City is an ambitious effort from director and writer (along with Stefano Bises and and David Serino) Gabriele Mainetti that fuses together cultures as well as genres into a sprawling martial arts action drama. Liu Yaxi stars as Mei, a young woman from Fujian Province who travels to Rome seeking her older sister, Yun, who went abroad to earn enough money to cover the acknowledgement penalty Mei faced as a consequence of being born under the (now repealed) one child policy in China. Mei's first stop is a brothel that appears to have trafficked Yun and Mei learns, via hard hitting kung-fu fueled interrogation, that her sister has run off with the married proprietor of a local restaurant. Pursuing Yun's trail, Mei encounters Marcello (Enrico Borello), the son of said proprietor, who is mainly preoccupied with keeping the restaurant running but is also interested in his father's whereabouts. Mei's relentless pursuit uncovers the connections between Marcello's family, low-level gangster and slumlord Annibale (Marco Giallini), and Wang (Chunyu Shanshan); a Chinese gang-leader who runs the brothel as well as the titular Forbidden City restaurant. The fates of Yun and Marcello's father are also soon revealed and the hunt for missing persons transforms into a bloody-minded quest for vengeance. City combines family drama, culture-clash romance, travelogue, and gritty martial arts action into a slickly produced, well acted crime story that successfully entertains even if it doesn't execute each element perfectly.
Liu Yaxi's career has mainly comprised of stunt work (Mulan) and she brings that professional level of physicality to the role of Mei. There are several fight sequences throughout the film including an absolute ripper near the beginning that transforms a restaurant kitchen into a veritable funhouse of pain and violence. The film's fight choreography is innovative and features a diverse display of improvised weaponry from the whimsical (a fish or bouquet of roses) to the viscerally gnarly (a kitchen grater) while never losing a realistic sense of gravity. Commendably, Marcello isn't called upon to assert any spontaneous fighting acumen, letting Mei fully inhabit that role, but demonstrates his resourcefulness in the kitchen and exhibits resolute bravery in the face of physical danger. While the earlier fight scenes are characterized by some faster editing, the genuine athleticism of the performers is still allowed to take center stage. A later showdown between Wang and Mei uses a more traditional medium shot framing providing sufficient real estate to highlight their abilities. There's an elegance to Yaxi's style that's even further emphasized by her tall, athletic frame though in no way does she sacrifice speed and agility in her movements. Chunyu Shanshan is a long-time veteran of the genre and the film does a terrific job of obscuring his martial prowess until this major set-piece.
Beyond the bone-crunching action sequences, the other facets of Forbidden City land with various degrees of success. The performances are solid and very charming. The antagonists-turned-lovers relationship between Mei and Marcello convinces largely based on the charisma and chemistry between the two leads. Setting the film in Rome and allowing for Mei to fall in love with both the city and Marcello during a nighttime scooter tour is, admittedly, hard to resist. I also appreciated how Rome is depicted as a multicultural city beyond a simple Italian/Chinese dichotomy and there is room made for North African/Middle Eastern immigrant narratives as well. Marco Giallini and Chunyu Shanshan are both believable in their respectively brutal though paternalistic roles even as things get somewhat murky about their motivations in the final act. There is a plot twist that can be seen from space for anyone familiar with crime film and another one that was a legitimate surprise for me. At nearly two hours and twenty minutes, there's certainly some material that could have been excised from the final cut while maintaining a coherent narrative. Still, it's understandable when trying to capture so many genres in a single film.
There's a prevalence of CGI phoniness in 21st Century action films and while Mainetti's genre-bender isn't immune to a level of digital polish, it still possesses an authenticity in both its action and setting. There have been various films tackling Asian and Italian gang conflicts since the 70s, but for the most part they have taken place either in New York, Hong Kong, or both. Forbidden City's blend of European and Chinese sensibilities, languages, and performers brings something unique this well established formula. While the finale does meander, there's enough leading up to that to be well worth checking out for martial arts/action fans. Liu Yaxi absolutely has the genre goods and gives a breakout performance as Mei. I will be hotly anticipating whatever is next for her.
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