Forbidden City (2025)
Set in the cosmopolitan melting pot of Rome’s Piazza Vittorio neighborhood, “The Forbidden City” sees two very different souls intersect. One is a mysterious young woman with some mean kung fu skills who has just arrived from China in the Italian capital in search of her missing sister; the other is the son of an indebted local restaurant owner who has disappeared with his lover. These two lost souls are catapulted into an action-packed descent into the criminal underworld of the Italian capital dominated by the Chinese mafia.
Mainetti, who is known internationally for previous genre-bending titles “They Call Me Jeeg” and “Freaks vs. the Reich,” in his latest work “shows impressive command of a kinetic action style rarely achieved outside Southeast Asia, balancing well-choreographed confrontations with the narrative expectations of a European audience,” wrote Variety’s chief critic Peter Debruge in his review. Debruge further noted that “The Forbidden City” blends elements of gangster movie, family melodrama and romantic comedy alongside all those spectacular fights.”
“The Forbidden City” stars Chinese martial artist Liu Yaxi, who was Liu Yifei’s stunt double in Disney’s “Mulan,” alongside Italy’s Enrico Borello (“Lovely Boy”); Sabrina Ferilli (“The Great Beauty”); Marco Giallini (“Perfect Strangers”) and Luca Zingaretti (“Montalbano”).
Stunning cinematography, outstanding performances, and a genuinely intriguing premise. The screenplay, however… The first half hour is powerful, tight, and wouldn’t be out of place in a film by Miike or Tarantino. At the outset, the blend of Eastern action cinema and Italian-style comedy seems to work miraculously well. The two genres manage to coexist because each character is sketched just enough to give the film its necessary weight.(imdb.com)
Rating – 7.8: Overall, a true melting pot of a movie as it is a kung-fu, familial drama, and romance all wrapped up in one that juxtaposes Chinese and Italian cultures to make an entertaining experience; but, it is really held back by its dual climax structure because you have such an adrenaline dump after the first that you really do not want to go through a second. (imdb.com)
Mainetti’s films have an epic scale and grandeur that belie their very reasonable budgets. U.S. film executives should take note that it’s possible to make something that feels this big for a fraction of what Hollywood spends on an action film. Cinematographer Paolo Carnera captures the beauty of Rome while still focusing on Mainetti’s fictional underbelly of the great city. It’s rare to find a martial arts film where the audience becomes so invested in the characters. Be sure to see this one on the big screen if it plays an arthouse near you. (Rotten Tomatoes)
