Italy is neither the first nor fifth country that comes to mind for exporting martial-arts movies, yet that’s hardly stopped director/co-writer Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg) from crafting an epic one with The Forbidden City.
From China, Mei (Yaxi Liu, 2024’s Second Life) arrives in Rome to look for her missing sister, potentially forced into a prostitution ring. Her search puts restaurant cook Marcello (Enrico Borello, Netflix’s Supersex) on her radar. Not coincidentally, Marcello’s father also has disappeared. The setup for — and connections among — each runs deeper than your patience would have for print, so just know this: Mei tells Marcello, “I must have revenge.”
And boy, does she possess the skills to back that up. In lightning-fast skirmishes with gangsters from two crime bosses, Mei uses feet, fists and anything else that catches her fancy: cheese graters, floral arrangements, boiling noodles, market-fresh fish and music CDs cracked into jagged halves. Liu’s main career as a stunt performer makes all the difference in presenting Mei as an imposing threat.
Mainetti could stand some restraint; at 138 minutes, The Forbidden City starts wearing thin. But at no time does his film not look like the proverbial million bucks, applying his country’s bold giallo coloring to the backdrops of Liu’s lively feats of acrobatics. Providing excellent support are The Great Beauty’s Sabrina Ferilli, ACAB’s Marco Giallini and iRobot’s Roomba. —Rod Lott