While most of the films produced during the heyday of Hong Kong action cinema took place either in Hong Kong or in historical China, some of the most memorable movies of the time were set and produced in the West. These films frequently dealt with Chinese immigrant communities, often featuring lead characters who leave Hong Kong to visit relatives abroad and have to solve some problem through typically violent means. The diasporic element of these films sets them apart from, say, American movies set in Europe which usually focus on a lone American traipsing through European locales, but the appeal of location shooting remains the same. This way you could watch Sammo Hung play an investigator in Barcelona (Wheels on Meals), Bruce Lee fight Chuck Norris in the Colosseum (Way of the Dragon), and Jackie Chan rumble in Vancouver (Rumble in the Bronx).
Though it is an Italian production, Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City is indebted to this tradition. The film stars stuntwoman Yaxi Liu as Mei, a martial artist who has allowed herself to be trafficked to Rome in search of her sister and battles her way through the local Chinese crime syndicate looking for answers and, inevitably, revenge. After an opening scene in the past that both shows Mei learning kung fu under her father’s tutelage and positions her as her family’s secret second daughter under China’s One-Child policy, Mainetti jumps ahead to the present with an explosive opening fight scene in which Mei escapes from captivity in a Chinese restaurant’s basement in Rome. It’s a fluid, kinetic action scene that goes from the stairs, through a hidden brothel, and into the restaurant’s kitchen. Mei’s hand-to-hand combat skills are more than enough for her foes, but she makes great use of her environment, fashioning deadly weapons out of woks, cast iron pans, frying oil, hot grills, and, best of all, a cheese grater. It’s both brutal and fun, landing somewhere in the middle of The Raid and a Jackie Chan scene.
It’s also an elegant introduction to the film as it uses its tour through locations to make a literal connection between restaurants and the (criminal) underworld, one which is mirrored by the story’s other lead, chef Marcello (Enrico Borello), the son of a missing gangster and restaurateur. Marcello’s father, we learn, ran off with Mei’s sister, incurring the wrath of both Italian and Chinese gangsters. Mei and Marcello’s paths cross and they go from enemies to partners quickly. Their scenes together, like a nighttime tour of Rome’s landmarks, are often charming, but for the most part the film can’t reconcile that its two halves don’t complement one another. While Mei is in an action-revenge movie with a handful of great fight scenes, Marcello inhabits a rote familial gangster drama. And though Mainetti finds thematic resonance in invoking both Italian and Chinese crime movie traditions, the individual shapes of their narratives don’t play well together.
Unfortunately, as The Forbidden City goes on, Mainetti starts to tip the scales in favor the Italian side of the dichotomy he has set up. There’s not much outright wrong with the story of Marcello, his newly single mother, and the suspicious gangster uncle making moves on her, but the disparity between the plainness of this material and the heights of Mei’s action scenes is stark. Because the film spends so much time on Marcello, it only has room for two more set pieces after its introductory stunner, neither of which matches that opening. In fact, by the time Mei’s last battle concludes, there is still a half hour left in the film. During this stretch, it seems that the film’s two halves might finally converge and one final confrontation will satisfy both narrative threads, but then the film just peters out in a whimper of unrealized potential, its incredible beginning more than two hours in the rearview.
DIRECTOR: Gabriele Mainetti; CAST: Yaxi Liu, Enrico Borello, Sabrina Ferilli, Marco Giallini; DISTRIBUTOR: Well Go USA; STREAMING: March 17; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 18 min.
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