The Forbidden City

If you’ve been following the career of Gabriele Mainetti, you know the man is essentially trying to single-handedly drag Italian cinema out of the "middle-aged people arguing in a kitchen" subgenre and into something far more explosive. After the gritty superhero deconstruction of They Call Me Jeeg (2015) and the Spielbergian-on-acid whimsy of Freaks Out (2021), Mainetti returned in 2025 with The Forbidden City. It’s a film that feels like it was born from a fever dream involving a Gomorrah marathon and a stack of Shaw Brothers Blu-rays.

I caught this one during its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it theatrical run, sitting in a half-empty cinema where the air conditioning was blowing so hard I had to wear my hood up like a suspicious extra in a spy thriller. It’s a shame more people didn't brave the cold, because while The Forbidden City is a mess, it’s the kind of ambitious, big-budget swing that we rarely see in an era where mid-range original IP usually gets sent straight to a streaming graveyard.

Wuxia in the Eternal City

The premise is a classic "worlds collide" setup. Marcello (Enrico Borello), the son of a restaurant owner drowning in debt, finds himself tethered to Mei (Liu Yaxi), a mysterious girl searching for her sister. The "City" of the title isn't Beijing—it's the Esquilino district of Rome, a vibrant, multicultural hub that Mainetti and cinematographer Paolo Carnera (who also lensed the neon-soaked Adagio) transform into a labyrinth of shadows and saturated colors.

What makes the film immediately arresting is the action choreography. This isn't your standard "shaky-cam and quick-cuts" Hollywood fare. Because Liu Yaxi actually has the physical pedigree (she was the stunt double in Disney's Mulan), the fights have a terrifying, grounded grace. There’s a sequence in a cramped restaurant kitchen early on that is staged with more spatial clarity than the last three Marvel movies combined. You actually see the weight of the blows and the desperate geometry of the room. Mainetti understands that action is a form of dialogue; Mei’s fighting style tells us more about her discipline and trauma than any of the exposition-heavy scenes later on.

The $18 Million Question

There is a glaring elephant in the room: the budget. At over $18 million, this was a massive gamble for an Italian-Chinese co-production. In a post-pandemic market where audiences are increasingly picky about what they’ll leave their couches for, The Forbidden City struggled to find its footing. It earned less than $1.5 million at the box office, a figure that is honestly heartbreaking for a movie that clearly left its heart and soul on the pavement.

Why didn't it click? Part of it is the tonal whiplash. Mainetti loves to oscillate between brutal Roman crime drama—anchored by veterans like Marco Giallini and Luca Zingaretti—and high-flying genre tropes. Sabrina Ferilli shows up as Lorena, adding a layer of seasoned Roman grit, but the film often feels like it's fighting itself. It wants to be a romantic epic, a social commentary on the Chinese diaspora in Italy, and a brutal martial arts flick all at once. For some, the mix was likely too jarring, but for me, that’s exactly where the magic lies. I’ll take a glorious, over-ambitious failure over a safe, focus-tested "content" block any day.

Practical Blood and Digital Dreams

The film’s reliance on practical stunt work is its saving grace. In an era where "The Volume" and green screens have made everything look like a PlayStation 5 cutscene, seeing Enrico Borello and Liu Yaxi actually running through the rain-slicked streets of Rome feels refreshing. The production design by Massimiliano Sturiale is tactile; you can almost smell the damp stone and the frying oil.

Interestingly, the film’s failure at the box office has already started its transition into "cult oddity" status on social media. Fans of Mainetti are dissecting the score by Fabio Amurri, which blends traditional Chinese instrumentation with electronic pulses, creating a soundscape that feels uniquely modern. It’s a "vibe" movie, a film that captures the anxiety of the 2020s—debt, displacement, and the search for connection—and wraps it in the skin of a thriller.

Apparently, Liu Yaxi spent months training the Roman cast in basic stunt movements to ensure the background brawls looked authentic, and it shows. There is a sense of physical risk here that is often missing from contemporary action. When someone goes through a window, you don’t just see the glass break; you feel the impact.

The Forbidden City is the kind of movie that shouldn't exist in 2025. It’s too expensive to be "indie," too weird to be a blockbuster, and too Italian for most international markets to know what to do with it. Yet, it’s a vital piece of contemporary cinema precisely because of those contradictions. It’s a reminder that even in an age of franchise dominance and streaming algorithms, there are still directors willing to spend millions of dollars to see if they can make a Wuxia film set in a Roman trattoria work. It’s flawed, overlong, and occasionally confusing, but I'd rather watch this movie's mistakes than watch a boring movie get everything right. Seek it out before it becomes a lost relic of the decade.