![]() ![]() He has also mastered Spike’s languid anime gait, hands parked in the pockets of an angular blue suit that would not look out of place on a Duran Duran album cover. Here, he finds an insouciant, playful groove, and the commitment of his physical performance goes beyond hand-to-hand combat training. ![]() Pineda’s Faye is an entertainingly dismissive motormouth who reveals emotional depths as the season unfolds.īoth have excellent chemistry with Cho, an actor who radiated decency as Sulu in the recent Star Trek movies and uptightness in the Harold and Kumar franchise, but has rarely been given the chance to play the coolest person in the room. Shakir, formerly a menacing heavy in Netflix’s Luke Cage series, is gruff but convincingly big-hearted as the ex-cop who dotes over a daughter he rarely sees. Maintaining such a heightened, madcap tone is a high-wire act that relies on the charisma of the three leads. Playful groove … John Cho as Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop. Most episodes involve the Bebop crew chasing down larger-than-life criminals – including hardline eco-terrorists, killer clowns and a deranged bomber in an oversized teddy bear mask – with the prospect of a confrontation between the laconic Spike and the cruel Vicious bubbling just below the surface. Spike has a complicated history with ashen-haired gang- enforcer Vicious (Alex Hassell) and songbird moll Julia (Elena Satine). ![]() The verbal fencing among the trio is almost manic – the ship’s breakout space even has a sitcom-ready scuffed yellow couch.īut all three voyagers also have painful secrets that threaten to overwhelm the present. Perhaps because of hunger, the mood on board the Bebop is usually irritable or sarcastic. They struggle to keep their heads above water even before sharp-tongued rival Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) gatecrashes their clunky amphibious spaceship, the Bebop. Yet, owing to bad luck and questionable personal decisions, the pair are constantly on the back foot. By rights, they should be elite bounty hunters. His imposing partner Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) is a tough-as-nails former cop with a metal arm. Spiegel is a gifted sharpshooter and martial arts master. Freelance “cowboys” bring in villains – dead or alive – for a reward, just like in the old west. An excess of outlaws and ne’er-do-wells in these hardscrabble places has made bounty hunting a popular occupation. There are space station casinos and gleaming cyberpunk cities but also countless rickety towns and dusty outposts on far-flung moons (the series was shot in New Zealand and often looks appropriately otherworldly). An unspecified disaster on Earth has pushed humankind out into the local cosmos, creating a new galactic frontier. It is set in a vibrant but messy sci-fi future, precariously built on top of the technological and pop-culture clutter of now. The 2021 version is a fast-talking, visually amped-up space western that feels stylised and swaggering to near saturation, powered by the same jazz freakout soundtrack that helped make the original an enduring cult hit. But even if you were unaware of Cowboy Bebop’s animated origins it might not take long to twig that this 10-part series was inspired by an exuberant cartoon. The outcome involves a frantic foot chase, a rooftop fight and a memorable moment with a gigantic provocative billboard.ĭoing things “the fun way” seems to have been the mission statement for this live-action adaptation of a 1998 Japanese anime series, made with the blessing of its original creator Shinichirō Watanabe. “We can do this the easy way, or the fun way,” purrs Spiegel. The self-amused hero has an ice-cool opening line ready to go. While propping up the bar at a gaudy sex club on Mars, a rakish bounty hunter improbably named Spike Spiegel (John Cho) locks eyes with his current target: a murderous, anxious thief. ![]()
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