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For the Emperor AKA Hwangjereul Wihayeo
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Well Go USA Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (8th July 2015). |
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The Film
 After a shoulder injury demotes baseball star Lee Hwan (Min-ki Lee) to relief pitcher, he is reduced to fixing games for gangsters. After he is busted in a raid and gets out of jail, Lee retrieves his cut of the winnings by taking out three men under construction CEO Jung Sang Ha (Sung Woong Park) whose operations are a front for his loan sharking and the machinations of the company's still active retired chairman. Rising through the ranks on account of his mental acuity in fixing odds as well as his fighting skill, Lee becomes favored above his boss' other men even as he takes liberties with the madam (Tae-im Lee) who is financially indebted to Jung to the point of being a virtual sex slave. As Jung's business changes over the years towards more legitimate (if still professionally dubious) ends and Lee's responsibilities change, the ambitious younger man seeks council from the Chairman and becomes further entangled in a web of betrayals that are further compounded by the early release of Jung's vengeful former partner. Although claiming to be based on a comic book series by Seong-Dong Kim, For the Emperor plays like a stew of Asian crime move elements with its thin plot crammed in the spaces in between lengthy violent and sexy slow montages of its uncharismatic protagonist strolling through clubs and fights in slow motion to a monotonous piece that sounds like a none-too-thinly-disguised riff on Santana's "Smooth". Although sexually graphic and explicitly violent (if confusingly choreographed), it is a rather soulless enterprise that tries for poignancy in its final sequence. The elder performers get by with their dignity intact, but most of the younger performers are never so terrible so much as hindered by the material. The end result feels as much like a demo reel for a Hollywood hopeful as Korean theater filler.
Video
Well Go USA's BD25 features a suitably slick MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer of this flashy production which does not seem to take its visual inspiration from comic books but from just about any Korean identikit action film of late. Detail is good, but the predominantly dark settings give a visual murkiness to what should be exciting and vicious action scenes (going by the demonstrative sound design).
Audio
The bone-crunching, blood-splattering surround track is given an immersive encode in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo downmix is also included).
Extras
There are no extras apart from the film's theatrical trailer (1:10) and previews for other Well Go titles (also presented as start-up trailers).
Overall
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