In Code Name: Emperor, Juan (Luis Tozar) is the type of guy who cuts to the chase. When a judge he just saved under the Agency’s control throws a fit about not being caught snorting cocaine in his hotel room with a 15-year-old boy, he grabs a set of pictures and holds them about one inch to his face. He tells the judge his new friend had a seizure while doing drugs in his room.
The judge, a political animal who didn’t want to get caught with his pants down in many ways, throws him off the balcony so they wouldn’t find the body on the premises he was renting for the night. That’s Juan for you. He doesn’t give a fuck if you are an asset. He does his job, but he won’t let you lie to yourself, either.
Juan is a weathered agent working for the Social Affairs division. His boss has him doing shady and illegal things on the side. We must protect our friends, he says. Like the star player of the country’s most profitable football team who beats up his girlfriend. Juan crafts a story that a robber beat them both up. Wait, both? That is, our guy finds a solution to that injustice as well. He gets to smack around this piece of trash. Juan is determined, has an eternal salt and pepper five o’clock shadow, and a shaved head with a large landing strip for his receding hairline on that dome he calls a head. He also looks like the second coming of Abe Vigoda. (I swear, look at the pictures side by side).
Juan runs something called the Robes control play, which is like the back of his hand. Set up your target in a dire situation – your typical caught-in-bed with-hookers deal — make them think you saved them, and then you can control their every move. His boss has set up his next play. He wants him to find anything he can on a local politician named Angel (Denis Gomez) and a German couple who may be terrorists selling illegal weapons.
Juan does this by making the German maid think she is being kidnapped. Wendy (Alexandra Masangkay) is so grateful that she helps him unwittingly. They set up cameras in the house and track their guests and digital footprints. They start an affair, and Juan falls for her. Wendy eventually realizes she has been used, but Juan convinces her to stay in the house because it will draw more suspicion. Finally, his team tracks down the weapon, Cobalt, and places it in their possession. When the Germans are arrested, he has Wendy stay with him at his apartment.
When they do the same thing to Angel, they only find some soft porn and a fake social media account. Their target does some catfishing, and Juan has a young woman, Marta (Georgina Amoros), who helps set up Angel. However, when Marta sleeps with him once, he gives him the impression this is his first time. When they set him up a second time, she headsbutts a bathroom countertop, she bleeds, runs out of the hotel, and Juan strolls in pretending to be the police, and she has filed a complaint.
He intends to interrogate Angel and find out why his boss wants to grab dirt on him. However, there is nothing, and Juan lets his frustration show. While this is happening, Marta is watching Juan over his laptop in an adjacent hotel room, where he monitors the setup. Marta was a child when she met Juan and thought he always had her best interests at heart. Now, she watches him manipulate Angel as he did to her years prior. Realizing this, she runs away with the computer. Juan finds it later smashed.
However, he has all his work backed up. He tells his boss, Galan, that the plan never played out the way they wanted. When he comes back, Wendy is missing. He looks at the cameras he has set up outside his building and sees that Wendy has been arrested by one of his people. She will be deported unless he hands over what he has to Galan. He does it for Wendy’s freedom. But why is this important? Angel is innocent, but those are the most dangerous, Galan says. He needs the video to check and balance political power. There then is a shift in Spain. Angel is promoted to a higher and more powerful position, and it appears Galan is head of Social Affairs.
Eventually, he meets Wendy and hands her passports, cash, and a ticket out of town. She kisses him and gives him clues on how to find her. However, Juan gave an Agency reporter his drive full of every case he has ever worked on. The Agency did a plethora of illegal activities while investigating Angel. It is encrypted, but she is sent an email with the code “Emperor.”
Juan hands over the power back to Angel, by all accounts a good man, and away from opposing forces who want to control it.
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