For The Emperor (South Korea, 2014)

 

Nathan's review:

Hwan (Lee Min-ki), an ex pro Baseball player riddled with debt and out of work due to match fixing, finds himself making an impression on Busan crime boss Jung Sang-ha (Park Sung-woong) after a brawl in a gambling hall. Joining the syndicate, he soon rises in the ranks making a name off the back of his fighting skill and talent for illegal sports betting. But the higher he rises, the murkier the allegiances around him become and the release from prison of a legendary Busan gangster threatens to bring the empire crashing down.

Park Sun-jun's gangland epic never really got the attention it deserves. From its bloodsoaked opening that sees rival gangs go at it in a stunning midnight office raid as men viciously stab each other in the stomach repeatedly in a whirlwind of extreme violence, to its endless parade of sharp suits, growling Busan dialect and power plays, it's clear that Park wasn't out to reinvent the wheel, but rather to deftly handle genre elements and deliver a highly entertaining, if all too familiar crime narrative.

Slickly shot in a way that is expected of contemporary Korean film and with a modern poppy-synthy soundtrack to back it up, there really isn't much here that can make For the Emperor stand out amongst its peers, but that's also not necessarily a bad thing either as sometimes a little bit of familiarity can be a very good thing, as is certainly the case here. Director Park instead focuses on making this a ridiculously fun and extremely well paced ride that concentrates instead on its two rather brilliant male leads and crucially, a whole lot of stabbing, beatings and uber masculine maiming.

I think too that my own personal enjoyment from this comes from it feeling very much like a 70's Toei film, but obviously put through a modern Korean filter. It's moody, doomed lead is much akin to the sort of character that a director like Sadao Nakajima or even Kinji Fukasaku would have put through the wringer circa 1976, complete with a romantic subplot that to a modern audience probably feels unnecessary, wonky allegiances, betrayal and even some hard-core brotherhood melodrama that leads to a tragic, and of course, very bloody denouement.

Lee Min-ki as Hwan is.... interesting casting and I must admit on my first viewing, I didn't really buy him as the tough, fearless and conflicted mobster with a natural born affinity for punching and stabbing. His pretty boy looks and curly hair over his forehead, coupled with the characters inherently quiet moodiness felt a little off, but on a rewatch, I actually kind of love his performance now. It's clear that he's giving it his all, which parallels his characters arc well and makes the role feel almost natural in the sense of what he goes through on-screen. Backing him as crime boss and mentor, Sang-ha, is the thoroughly excellent Park Sung-woong who admittedly is a huge favourite of mine and he delivers what he does best, a suave and sharp suited vision of masculinity bristling with menace, the man is a natural and I'll never get bored of him staring down others in the coolest suits imaginable.

For the Emperor isn't going to blow anyone away with its generic rise and fall gangland narrative, but at the same time it's 100 minutes of slick, violent macho nonsense, and sometimes that's all you need. Recommended highly to fans of Korean action, but also to my fellow Toei masochists thanks to its almost Jitsuroku-esque feel, which leads to an interesting train of thought that I've had in mind for a number of years now. Did Korea resurrect the genre with its post-2000 mafia films that often have a realistic feeling and at least an inspiration in real world antics?

Paul's review:

This is a very stabby film. 

People get stabbed in in. 

Stabbed a lot. 

There is also spot on, horrible squelchy sound effect for the knife impacts.

Cool.

Lee Hwan the main  gangster character has hair like a toilet brush and a cruel look on his boyish face that remains unchanged through out the film. As Nathan mentioned, the plot is kind of blah, it's been done a million times before but there is a weird baseball angle and A LOT of stuff early on about online betting that was lost on me. I don't know anything about sports or betting. But soon people were getting murdered by gangsters and/or beaten by loan sharks and I was ok with that. 

The old boss character  annoyingly either spends the whole movie speaking in metaphors or the subtitles were bad. 

For The Emperor fits the basic rise and fall story arc of classic gangster films, but also slotting in the doomed romance and bloody brotherhood of 90s Hong Kong cinema. It's nothing amazing but it is a lot of fun, a sort of entertaining mid tier entry of Korean macho bullshit.

Yeah!