Code Name Emperor

2022 1h 46m Spanish 5.8

Drama, Thriller

Juan (Luis Tosar) is a middle-aged Spanish intelligence agency operative who leads a small team that includes a male hacker and a female operative with a range of skills. He juggles tracking a wealthy couple who are involved in meetings with a Neo-Nazi leader and a weapons trafficker and surveillance of a young congressman.To gain access to the weapons trafficking couple's mansion, Juan and his team stage a kidnapping of the couple's live-in Filipino maid, Wendy (Alexandra Masangkay), and they make it seem as if Juan is another kidnapping victim. The team throw the pair out of the vehicle at a stop. This set-up gives Juan the opportunity to meet Wendy. He romances her, which gives him access to the mansion so he can install hidden cameras. Juan is shown to be a justice-oriented cop, without disregard for procedure. A wealthy footballer Fernando (Aron Piper) beats his Ukrainian wife Branka. Branka calls the cops and Juan arrives. Fernando has messed up Branka's face. Branka knows that she can't complain as Fernando's boss, the owner of the football club, knows the Ukrainian President. They will harass Branka's family, if she steps out of line. So, Juan beats up Fernando mercilessly, and reports the crime as a robbery gone wrong.As the surveillance of the weapons traffickers continues, Juan continues to meet with Wendy to gain access to the house. His team discovers evidence that the couple are planning to bring black market Cobalt-60 into Spain, which may be part of a dirty bomb plot. Even though Juan is using his sexual relationship with Wendy as part of the surveillance operation, he starts to become emotionally attached to her. She tells him of her dream of saving enough from her work as a maid to return to the Philippines and open a bed and breakfast hotel with her sisters.Juan's boss, a career-driven, politically-connected officer named Galan (Miguel Rellan), assigns Juan to look into the life of newly-elected congressman Ángel Gonzalez (Denis Gomez) for illegal or unethical conduct. When Juan's team does hacking and video surveillance and it does not reveal any improprieties, Galan instructs Juan to lure the politician into a compromising situation. Juan knows from observing Angel that he is into sexual fantasies with teenage girls.Juan pressures Marta (Georgina Amorós), a teenage girl he knows from a previous case (she is the daughter of a famous actor, who got addicted to drugs when she was 15 and gave a BJ to a drug dealer for a hit. Juan still had the recording from the case), to participate in a honey trapping set-up. She sends flirtatious messages to Angel on a dating site. She meets Angel for drinks at a fancy nightclub and then plays it coy. Juan contrives a seeming "chance encounter" with her when Angel is on a work trip. She goes back to Angel's hotel room (in which Juan has had a video camera installed). After they have sex, she goes into the bathroom and smashes her nose into the sink, and then flees into the hall.Juan confronts Angel and tells him that he has just had sex with a minor and assaulted her. Marta feels sickened by her participation in the setup, and she smashes Juan's surveillance-cam laptop and flees. Juan finds the distraught teen at her apartment and retrieves his laptop. Despite the damage, the sex recording is intact.Juan knows that the Cobalt-60 is coming in from Argentina and theorizes that the smugglers will use the same route that they use to smuggle drugs into Spain. He trades 50 kilos of captured heroine to find the port where the cobalt-60 sample will land in Spain. Through that he tracks the couriers being used to ferry the sample to the buyers.Meanwhile, as the weapons trafficking case develops, Wendy discovers that Juan has been using her to get access to the house and she is upset at his deception. Juan comes clean to Wendy and convinces her not to run away. After Juan and his team track the Cobalt-60 shipment and arrest the smugglers, police arrest the weapons trafficking couple, but Wendy was out of the house. He asks her to stay at his apartment until she can resettle. Reluctantly, she agrees. Juan convinces Galan that there is nothing suspicious about Angel. Juan knows deep down that Angel is innocent and this is his own brand of justice.When police arrest Wendy and threaten to deport her, Juan provides information to Galan to prove that Wendy was working for him. Galan explains that the intelligence service tries to ensure that they have compromising information on all politicians, to help the government to control leaders. Galan promises that Wendy will be released but wants the Angel recording in exchange. Juan gets her travel documents and a ticket to the Philippines so she can flee. He gives a hard disk of his surveillance operations to a reporter (Laura Domínguez) and tells her to blow the whistle on the intelligence agency's unethical and illegal practices. He then abandons his old life to join Wendy in the Philippines.