Verdict
Summary
Overlong at 138 minutes, but still powerfully strong as a narrative action film with lots of subplots and peripheral characters, The Forbidden City (which is not a good title for this film) juggles lots of threads and somehow manages to make it all work thanks to solid direction by Gabriele Mainetti and gobsmackingly brutal fight scenes. Yaxi Liu has my vote for the “next big female action star,” and she’s good looking to boot, so it’s a win-win. The movie, though too long, looks good with solid cinematography and a decent score, and despite its length it never feels boring. A nice surprise, this one is a winner.
Plot:
A Chinese woman hell bent on vengeance for the death of her sister is thrown for a loop when she finds an ally in Italy who has a similar mission of vengeance.
Review:
Mei (stuntwoman Yaxi Liu), a young Chinese woman who was born in the dangerous time of China’s “one child” law, goes to Italy to track down her older sister who has disappeared without a trace. She tracks her down through the skin trade, allowing herself to be illegally trafficked, and when she gets wind that her sister Yun was working as a prostitute in Rome, Mei immediately reveals herself to be a formidable force to be reckoned with as she breaks arms, legs, and necks with her fierce kung fu fighting skills. She realizes that Yun was working for a gangster named Wang (Shanshan Chunyu) who has ties to an Italian family, whose patriarch also recently disappeared without a trace. When Mei crosses paths with both the Chinese and the Italian families, she inadvertently makes an ally out of the missing patriarch’s son Marcello (Enrico Borello), who isn’t quite sure what to make of Mei, who is basically a bulldozer. When they team up, they quickly realize that both Mei’s sister and Marcello’s father were killed alongside each other and dumped in a nameless grave to cover up the fact that they were in love and planned to shake up both the Chinese gangster’s business and the Italian family, and when Mei and Marcello pool their resources (she’s tough, and he knows Italy better than she ever could), everyone else better watch out because Mei will stop at nothing to get her revenge.
Overlong at 138 minutes, but still powerfully strong as a narrative action film with lots of subplots and peripheral characters, The Forbidden City (which is not a good title for this film) juggles lots of threads and somehow manages to make it all work thanks to solid direction by Gabriele Mainetti and gobsmackingly brutal fight scenes. Yaxi Liu has my vote for the “next big female action star,” and she’s good looking to boot, so it’s a win-win. The movie, though too long, looks good with solid cinematography and a decent score, and despite its length it never feels boring. A nice surprise, this one is a winner.
Well Go USA is releasing The Forbidden City on Blu-ray later this month, and it comes with some bonus trailers.
