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‘The Forbidden City’ Review: Italian-Made Martial Arts Movie Offers an Intriguing Fusion of Genres and Cultures
Director Gabriele Mainetti imports a fierce Chinese fighter to an ethnically mixed Roman neighborhood, launching Yaxi Liu as a potential action star.
The surprise stems from a prologue set in rural China, where a father teaches his two daughters kung fu (he has violated the country’s one-child policy, and the technique may come in handy lest they’re ever discovered) before leaping forward to its first bone-shattering set-piece. It amounts to one of the more inventive martial arts sequences in recent memory, culminating with the reveal: After confronting Chinese crime boss Mr. Wang (Shanshan Chunyu) on her way out of the restaurant, Mei bursts through the front doors and out into the streets … of Rome. But it ultimately results in several memorable fight scenes and a reasonably well-earned love story, which should earn more followers for unconventional/underground director Gabriele Mainetti, whose 2016 oddity “They Call Me Jeeg Robot” offered an inspired spin on the already-overplayed superhero genre.
Or read this on Variety