“Forge” Is a Smart and Stylish Caper

Forge (Jing Ai Ng, 2026) 3½ out of 5 stars

In a criminal underworld filled with grifters, where deception can be your livelihood, art forgery is a uniquely difficult trade. Your brushwork must be faithful enough to fool experts, but not personal enough to feel like it’s yours. It’s a delicate tightrope to walk, but thankfully, writer/director Jing Ai Ng is eager to explore it in her feature directorial debut, Forge. Taking a cue from crime filmmakers like Michael Mann and William Friedkin, Forge is a tense and smartly constructed caper about the value of authenticity.

On the sun-soaked streets of South Florida, Chinese American siblings Coco (Andie Ju, The Greatest Hits) and Raymond Zhang (Brandon Soo Hoo, The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu) have made thousands of dollars selling near-perfect forgeries of famous American paintings. After spending years trying not to disappoint their immigrant family, Ray is eager to seize the finer things in life, but Coco longs for recognition of her work, even if it’s under someone else’s name. Enter Holden Beaumont (Edmund Donovan, Civil War), a disgraced millionaire eager to run a more elaborate scam. He approaches the two to forge and resell his late grandfather’s art collection, worth millions of dollars. Unbeknownst to them, FBI Art Crimes agent Emily Lee (Kelly Marie Tran, Control Freak) is hot on their trail, intent on tracking down the master forger.

From the beginning, Jing Ai Ng evokes the colorful visuals and electronic score of 1980’s neo-noir. The cinematography is confident, with cameras either locked off on tripods or subtly sliding on dollies. However, the stakes are lower, almost relaxed compared to something like Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA. Instead, Ng emphasizes how much of the characters’ lives is spent performing for others. Soo Hoo is effortlessly charming as Ray, but he lies about being a banker to keep up appearances with his family. Coco is the more cunning of the two, but Ju plays the naïve ingenue in front of her marks. Even Holden is barely holding on to his family’s wealth. Seemingly everyone is wearing a mask, so does authenticity mean anything?

Agent Lee gives us the counterargument: art only means something if it comes from a place of truth. If you found out your favorite painting was made by a fraud, wouldn’t that devalue it? It’s an interesting debate that Ng explores, with no easy answers. In addition, her script utilizes some classic crime tropes (i.e., the cops and criminals unwittingly interacting as strangers), but they’re really here to smuggle in a more personal story about Chinese families and the weight of expectations. Lee’s desire for community in Florida dovetails nicely with the Zhangs’ desire to transcend it. Ng even manages to add some commentary about how local authorities overlook hate crimes. But overall, Forge entertains without being heavy-handed.

Forge is a low-key but very watchable addition to the crime-movie canon. A compelling script matched with some inspired direction brings out the best in its narrative. Admittedly, its relaxed pace removes some narrative tension, but that seems like a feature, not a bug. This is a solid theatrical debut from Jing Ai Ng and I’m curious to learn more about how she sees the world.

George W. Campbell

George W. Campbell is a director/screenwriter/editor from Bowie, Maryland, whose films focus on themes of family and personal relationships. As a Nicaraguan-American filmmaker, he aims to highlight specific parts of his culture and personal experiences (songs, dances, foods, and language).