“The Forbidden City” Poster
Director: Gabriele Mainetti
Cast: Yaxi Liu, Enrico Borello, Marco Giallini, Sabrina Ferilli, Shanshan Chunyu, Elisa Wong
Running Time: 139 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Is there another city in Europe that has more connection to the kung-fu genre than Rome? I’m going to say no. From providing the classic backdrop to Bruce Lee’s directorial debut Way of the Dragon in 1972, it would go on to inspire several other productions to film in its historical streets. Seasonal Films founder Ng See-Yuen would team up with Bruce Leung for 1974’s double bill of Kidnap in Rome and Little Godfather from Hong Kong. See-Yuen would return again for the Bruce Lee biopic Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth in 1975. The 1982 Bruceploitation production Bruce Strikes Back would film there, swapping out Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris for Bruce Le and Hwang Jang Lee in an epic colosseum showdown. So it’s perhaps fitting that, in 2025, Italy decided to film its very own kung-fu movie there, in the form of The Forbidden City.
After helming a number of shorts and debuting with 2021’s Freaks Out, The Forbidden City marks the sophomore feature length production from director Gabriele Mainetti, and with the casting of Yaxi Liu as the lead, it would seem he means business when it comes to having genuine martial arts talent onscreen. Ironically The Forbidden City also offers up Liu’s sophomore role, having played a supporting part in 2024’s Second Life opposite Yuen Qiu and Philip Ng. However her main trade up to this point has been stunt work, applying her talents to the like of Vanguard and Mulan, so here she’s given a chance to shine with her first starring role.
Opening in 1995 China, it was a time when the one-child policy was still in place, and being a younger sister, the child version of her character spends a lot of time hiding in closets when she’d rather be outside learning kung-fu from her father. Skipping forward, we learn that her older sister illegally went to Italy through a Chinese gang and has gone missing, so now in the present-day Liu has followed the same route in order to find her. First though she’ll have to get past the Chinese traffickers she came with, along with several other ladies looking for a better life in Europe. Once they arrive they’re lined up in a basement, told to strip, and are soon being sold off to brothels and massage shops to repay their debt. Being the only one to stand her ground and refuse to disrobe, she immediately incurs the wrath of the madame in charge, which is all the excuse that’s needed for Liu to start busting out her considerable kung-fu talents.
Frankly, the opening 5-minute-long action sequence will easily find its way into the top 10 of any Best Fights of the 2020’s lists, a call I’m happy to make even with 4 years still on the clock. Director Mainetti’s influences are clear, with the setup of Liu fighting her way up the stairs feeling like it owes a tip of the hat to Tony Jaa’s one-take action sequence in 2005’s Tom Yum Goong (right down to it finishing up in a restaurant!), and a kitchen fight recalling the ambush on Iko Uwais in 2014’s The Raid 2 (complete with faces pressed onto grills – still just as painful as it looked 10 years earlier!). However while the setups may seem familiar, the choreography is what really stands out, with Liu conveying a sense of power and purpose with every kick and punch she unleashes. It’s clear she’s not someone who’s just wrapped up a few weeks training before the cameras started rolling.
Containing at least a couple of instances of grievous bodily harm I’d seen for the first time, The Forbidden City is the type of movie that will leave you asking yourself – how have kitchen fights been filmed before, and somehow never thought to incorporate a grater as a weapon!? Throw in snapped CD’s to be used as makeshift knives and a vat load of boiling cooking oil, in terms of introductory action sequences for a new talent, Yaxi Liu gets quite the calling card. Bear in mind at this point the opening title hasn’t even appeared on the screen!
The action comes courtesy of frequent JCVD double Trayan Milenov-Troy (who has the honour of playing different characters in Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, Undisputed 3: Redemption, AND Undisputed 4: Boyka!), frequent collaborators Emiliano Novelli (Reckless) and Marco Pancrazi (Solo Mio), and Liang Yang (that guy who Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill face off against in Mission: Impossible: Fallout). The opening sequence alone is enough to applaud their efforts, and sets audience expectations high for what’s to come. However once the sequence wraps, it’s not only the cooking oil that goes off the boil, but the pacing as well. Maybe I was asking too much for it to be a movie about a kung-fu fighting femme fatale rampaging through Rome looking for her sister.
Or maybe I wasn’t – that is still the main plot, but The Forbidden City quickly dumps a whole lot of other plot threads on top of it, many of which are given equal importance. We’re soon introduced to Enrico Borello (40 secondi), who plays the son of the character Liu is looking for, a restaurant owner who’s gone missing and is known to be in a relationship with her sister. Borello has to contend with both Liu and a shady gangster character played by Marco Giallini (Madly), an associate of his father and who used to date his mother. Then there’s the mother herself, played by Sabrina Ferilli (The Place), who’s a mess, but one that may be willing to rekindle the flame with Giallini (which may explain why she doesn’t seem at all fazed that her husband was having an affair!).
The interpersonal relationships that play out in the restaurant Borello now finds himself running feel like they make Liu a background character in her own movie for large swathes of the runtime, which is a crime in itself, however the bigger issue is that the change in focus also gives the production an identity crisis. Are we watching a kung-fu movie set in Rome, or are we watching an Italian genre mish mash, which just happens to have random bursts of kung-fu flit in and out of it? Increasingly, the answer feels like it’s the latter. I say genre mish mash, as the tone of The Forbidden City frequently induces whiplash – one minute it’s a social drama highlighting the plight of immigrants, next it’s a mobster style crime thriller, then it becomes a romance, complete with Liu and Borello cheerfully taking in the sights of Rome by night on a scooter. It’s a lot to take in, and sure enough the result is a sprawling runtime of almost 140 minutes.
That’s arguably 40 minutes too long, and when you factor in that Liu only gets 3 other set pieces to do her thing, that averages one fight every 35 minutes – not enough to be classified as a kung-fu movie by my calculations! It would have been preferable to have the plot focus on Liu and her vendetta against a local triad leader, played by Shanshan Chunyu (Wolf Warrior 2, Yellow River Fighter), although admittedly even he comes burdened with an unneeded subplot about his estranged rapper son. We even get to hear his latest track, that has an unfortunate habit of making Chunyu bust out the moves in such a way it induces second hand embarrassment. Liu versus Chunyu should be the finale (offering up a factory fight that utilises steam to throw in a few nods of the head to Enter the Dragon’s mirror fight), however it turns out the plot still has some mileage left in it.
Indeed perhaps the biggest indicator that The Forbidden City was never intended to be a full-blown kung-fu movie is the fact the finale doesn’t contain any, with a final third that falls into the excessive flashback trap, before offering up a dialogue focused finale mainly involving Borello and Giallini. Seemingly opting for a Shakespearean tragedy angle over visceral catharsis, the result is one that leaves Liu to simply watch on in the background as a passive bystander. Perhaps I was a victim of my own expectations, and had they been set accordingly, I could have enjoyed it more – what can’t be argued is that Liu and Borello have a likeable chemistry, an aspect that the narrative undeniably benefits from during its non-action moments. Ultimately there’s still much to enjoy, I mean, have you ever seen a bunch of roses being used as a weapon in a kung-fu fight? Probably not, I only wish that The Forbidden City could have come up roses more itself.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10
