The Movie: The Forbidden City / La Città Proibita
The Director: Gabriele Mainetti
The Cast: Yaxi Liu, Enrico Borello, Marco Giallini, Sabrina Ferilli, Chunyu Shansan
The Story: Mei arrives in Rome looking for her missing sister and, along the way, meets Marcello, who is desperate to find his father. Together, they will fight their way through the Roman underworld.
The Rating: 7 / 10
The Review:
During the first act of this movie, I was thinking that it had a chance to be one of the year's most fun and action-packed thrill rides with a lead character and actress that could potentially carry a franchise. The fight scenes are expertly choreographed and, at times, jaw droppingly brutal with just a few humorous touches mixed in to keep things entertaining. The rest of the movie however became an unfortunate exercise in how telling a story can get in the way of making a good movie.
Yaxi Liu, who has done some amazing stunt work in movies like the live action Mulan and the 3rd and 4th installments of the Kingdom franchise, is so good as Mei in this movie and I really hope we get to see more of her in these types of roles. She really does have that undeniable combination of star power and fighting skills which is pretty rare and the filmmakers take advantage of all of it in this movie. As I mentioned, the fight scenes are all top notch with Liu having several jaw dropping moments against all kinds of thugs and bad guys, I just wish she was given a better story to work with on the acting side of things.
For me, the movie gets bogged down in trying to tell a love story in a way that reminded me of Luc Besson's classic La Femme Nikita (and the US remake, Point of No Return) although not nearly as interesting. It felt like I was suddenly watching a completely different movie during the scenes between Mei and Enrico Borello's Marcello and it was all just really awkward. It does make sense in the context of the overall story, but it just doesn't work as a clean narrative when really all I wanted to see was more ass kicking. The love story angle doesn't completely derail the movie, I just believe it would have been better with it being less of a focus.
The fight choreography for the movie was created by Trayan Milenov-Troy of AlphaStunt and Emiliano Novelli of EA Stunts and wow do they deserve some major props for this one. There are multiple fights that make this movie a must watch for action and martial arts fans and the kitchen fight scene in particular literally kicks thing into high gear. I should probably also mention that the movie is set in Rome, Italy which adds a unique backdrop for this type of movie and the filmmakers really take advantage of all the beautiful backdrops and scenery that the city has to offer.
Overall, this is a well-crafted feature that overcomes its missteps by going all in on what it does best, and it should also be a springboard for Yaxi Liu to become an action star in her own right. Please give this movie a shot, especially if you are normally into this type of movie. You won't be disappointed.
Thank you for reading this review, there's more great martial arts movies coming out this year so stay tuned for my reviews and, if you haven't already, please also watch The Furious, one of my highest rated movies of the year so far.
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