Saturday 31 October 2015

For the Emperor

It's like a Korean, live-action version of Gungrave sans guns, coolness, and zombies.

A somewhat skilled baseball player with a lust for money is caught match fixing and soon is hired by a mafia type boss to be one of his enforcers. He quickly rises through the ranks to try reach his own ambition. Now is a good time to mention that this is a very violent movie. Most of the first five minutes is a stab fest where people are knifing each other, which brings me to an interesting point: no one in this film -including the police- uses guns, preferring to instead use clubs or knives. Maybe that's how it is in Korea? I wouldn't know.

Sub-titled title?

This is also the first movie where in no main character is part of the police force, yet the police utterly kick ass when they are brought in. They don't even need to fight, and I found their use very clever as the main players all try back stab (literally) each other. There's also a number of sex scenes and nudity that are there to showcase Lee Tae-im's hotness.


On the downside, there are a few shots that linger a bit too long on the main character and the story telling itself is a bit of a knot in places. The fighting is also more brawling than anything else, and the "boss" battles are pretty average. I suppose the main issue though is it doesn't really leave much of an impact and is a bit ho hum at the end. All up I give this two knives out of five and while I would watch it again, I'm not sure who I'd actually recommend it to. :P

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