Code Name: Emperor 2022 Movie Review
In Spain in recent years, a variant of the thriller that we could call “political-police” is flourishing, films in which stories are narrated in which there are elements of politics intertwined in criminal plots, or vice versa; Of course, always without specific proper names, or real parties, although the viewer can legitimately imagine what he sees fit in this regard. There are titles of this variant in which the police or purely criminal aspect predominates, with political irrationalities, as in One Hundred Years of Forgiveness (2016), by Daniel Calparsoro, but the opposite also occurs, where the political part prevails, as is the case from The Kingdom (2018), by Rodrigo Sorogoyen.
Emperor Codewhere an arms dealer lives who is suspected of trafficking in nuclear material; He also spies, at the behest of his boss, Galán, a high-ranking soldier from the “illegal” faction of his profession, on Ángel González, a second-rate politician who is interested in catching anything, even manufacturing it, to have him at his command. . For this last case, Juan is forced to recruit the daughter of an actor friend whom he saved years ago from public disrepute, when she was mired in drug addiction…
The Emperor Code plays its cards well, which are none other than a well-constructed script by Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Álex de la Iglesia’s regular co-writer, but who also has an interesting facet as a usual thriller screenwriter; thus, he has signed the cinematographic texts of titles such as Cell 211 , El Niño and Who kills iron , among others. Here Guerricaechevarría presents a meticulous history, a precision mechanism in which the two cited lines of argument come together, plus some collateral, such as that of the Supreme Court judge whom Juan will have to rescue from Panama for an execrable but uninteresting act. that transcends
Felipe González, who was president of the Spanish government for almost 14 years, once said, after leaving his responsibilities in such a high magistracy, that “the state defends itself in the halls, but also in the drains.” And, indeed, the heart of the film is, dressed in a thriller, a look that is not exactly friendly towards those drains, those sewers, in which the State is also defended. Here Coira, with its screenwriter Guerricaechevarría, bets more on the fact that with those actions that border on illegality, rather than defending the State, what is being done is defending the people who really hold the power, the Power, and that it is none other than the one that, really, has the money and the relationships to perpetuate itself at the top of society, although it often does so from the shadows.
Fast-paced thriller but without abusing the spectacular, it has the precise scenes of this type so that the film is easy to see, but it does not shy away from denouncing the ruling class that maintains a whole group of henchmen to perpetuate itself in power; We are not talking about specific ideologies: this was done by the Nomenklatura, the ruling class in the former USSR, to give an obvious example.
Well narrated by Jorge Coira, a Galician filmmaker (Lugo, 1971) with experience in movies of all kinds and, above all, in television series of all kinds, including some dramatic thrillers as powerful as the series Hierro , The Emperor Codeaspires, lawfully, to become a valuable contribution to the political-police subgenre to which we referred at the beginning, and does not ignore, in its final stretch, a denunciation and a hope, that it may be possible to escape from that guilty maze in the that when you enter it is so difficult to leave.
With an impeccable invoice and “look”, the film benefits, as always, from the charisma of an essential Luis Tosar in efforts of this type, in a role that he embroiders like few others; In fact, we cannot imagine any other current Spanish actor who can match his credible interpretation of this Juan, or Álex, a man with scruples at the orders of those who think that such a word designates a Greek archipelago, as they said in There is no one here live. The discovery is the young Alexandra Masangkay, a Barcelonan of obvious Filipino ancestors, who has already attracted attention in the popular El hoyo and who here plays a nuanced role, a very sweet woman who will have to distinguish between trickery and love when both appear in the door holding hands. Among the secondary students, we really liked the teacher Miguel Rellán, who makes everything seem so easy.
