For the Emperor
2014; directed by Park Sang-Jun

This South Korean gangster film, recently released on North American home video by Well Go USA, uses most of the well-worn tropes of the genre, being (not-so spoiler alert) a tale of a young gangster who rises to power but loses everything he holds dear in the process. Most viewers who enjoy these kinds of films have seen this sort of thing played out dozens of times before over the years. Perhaps knowing this, director Park Sang-Jun livens things up with a very liberal dose of the good old fashioned ultraviolence.

Based on a popular comic book, For the Emperor tells the story of Tae-Moo (Han Jae-Young), a baseball player who has taken to throwing games for money after an injury puts him on the bench. After dealing with some loan sharks, Tae-Moo attracts the attention of Kyung-Soo (Jae-Won Lee) who puts his skills to use as an enforcer.

For the Emperor's trajectory is telegraphed a mile away, but this film still delivers the goods, especially if you are a fan of "heroic bloodshed" gangster movies. One major plus is that this production actually employs squibs instead of CGI to show blood spurts. Are squibs considered oldschool now? If so, then this particular grizzled reviewer is geriatric, because it was so refreshing to see that method used instead of the lazy (and unconvincing) way out.

The rest of the movie doesn't it the high notes attained by the naughty bits -- there's also a bit of actual T&A thrown in versus the side boob action usually thrown in nowadays -- the acting is decent, but the performances are not all that special, and ultimately, the unoriginality of the story takes things down a notch. But, in the overall scheme of things, For the Emperor is a good bloody time to be had by all.

RATING: 7