Anime movies and series get a huge following not just because of its detailed and colorful animation style but because, in amongst all the action most of these shows and movies throw out there, there is actually a story with well-developed characters. Cowboy Bebop was a popular anime series in the late 1990s, and André Nemec (Zoo) has developed a live-action version of the series for Netflix. Does it live up to the animated version’s legacy?
Opening Shot: Lots of shots and screaming. Then we see the inside of a casino; bloody bodies are on the floor. A man with a gun is ranting about corporate ownership of everything.
The Gist: As this guy rants, and then threatens various innocent hostages with bodily harm, a man with headphones on comes down the elevator. He’s wearing a blue suit and looks like he has no clue what’s going on. But we soon see that the man, Spike Spiegel (John Cho), is there for a reason; he starts fighting all comers, mostly with his hands and feet, but does shoot the occasional bad guy. He’s soon joined by his partner in bounty hunting, Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir). They finally get the guy they need — they need him alive — but not before one of the guy’s henchmen use a disrupter to poke a hole in the walls of the casino. That’s bad news, because they’re on a ship in space, and mostly everyone gets sucked out the hole that was created.