Joel Kinnaman is a Swedish actor and the lead protagonist of this dark Netflix series. He is especially known for his memorable roles in The Killing, House Of Cards and of course, Alerted Carbon. Joel has played a complex protagonist named Takeshi Kovacs in the first season, who has a sinful past and traumatic childhood.
The man has really done wonders with this difficult character by playing it impeccably. Today we are going to share with you ten such scenes from the show that Joel totally rocked. Honestly, does the man even look like he is 40? Okay, let’s jump right in.
The Opening Scene
The first scene of Joel finds him in a slimy resurrection bed of some sort. He wakes up shortly after and gives the medical staff a scare of their lives. The sequence keeps alternating between Will Yun Lee's Takeshi and Joel's featuring how the former died before being put in prison for 250 years.
He is recalling all the events that happened right before he died, looks himself in a mirror and screams with disdain. Joel aptly shows the struggle of a man trapped inside another man’s body.
Crazy Couple-Fight Scene
Joel gets invited to the Bancroft's Party. He is in the future where wealthy people don't care about dying or killing, because money can buy gazillion sleeves. Hence, these meths indulge in dangerous violent games, one of which is Fight Drome. At the party, he sees a married couple fighting each other rhythmically.
Concerned with their safety, he gets involved and saves their lives. During the fight, he was hanging thirty feet above the ground on wires and his opponents were in the same position too. That sequence is such a mesmerizing one, albeit violent to the core.
When He Killed His Own Sister
At the end of the series, Kovacs’ sister reveals she was the one who set things in motion for Bancroft shooting himself in the stack. She also told Joel that Head In The Clouds, extremely abhorrent Wei clinic and the brothel Lizzie operated from, all were hers and that she owned more. She also tells him she is infatuated with him since their childhood and wants him to stay with her forever.
In the final scenes of the last episode, we see Kovacs killing her and the emotions required to film such a draining scene are aptly captured by Joel. Reileen had gone to a point where it was impossible for her to come back to sanity.
The Reluctance
Kovacs has a good heart and instinctively, he wants to do the right things. That's why even after being a ruthless government-appointed sniper that he was, he still turns on to them and later joins Quell's army to rebel against the stack technology. Reileen betrays them and he ends up in the same world after getting shot and mind- imprisoned for 250 years.
When he is resleeved by an insanely wealthy Bancroft, he is officially a servant of a person who represents all the things he fought against. The reluctance to do his bidding is pretty evident in Joel’s eyes, demeanor, and even his walk, throughout. He has just nailed the anti-hero image he had to play.
Assembling His Team
We are envoys and we take what is given. Takeshi is alone and he doesn’t have any friends or a team. So, he does what an Envoy would do. He takes what he is provided and makes the best of it. He even goes on to call them- his team members his friends and that seals the deal for most of them, especially Poe.
Vernon is brave, his wife Ava is a hacker and Poe is God. So all of them shake their hands and massacre the enemies.
Love Triangle Drama
Love is but a chemical reaction, caused by a cocktail of some hormones and a few pheromones that our consciousness has a little to do with. What if a man’s consciousness who gets trapped in another man's body falls for the host body’s lover? Is that complicated? How complicated would it be, play the consciousness while also playing the host body’s emotions, at the same time?
For such an extreme love triangle drama, Joel does it incredibly well. P.S. - Even a child could see the sexual tension building up between Joel Takeshi and Ortega in the fifth episode.
Revengeful Slaughter
Kovacs is kidnapped by Dimi 2 the twin and brought to a shady virtual torture clinic called The Wei Clinic where he is tormented cruelly until he dies over and over again several times. His nails are pulled out, leg sawed off, body burned and damaged by an alien creature while he is made to watch himself die a slow agonizing death.
It’s really hard to get in that headspace to imagine such trauma and effectively deliver it over the screens. Afterward, he understandably, RDs each and every employee of that creepy facility.
Seduced By Miriam
Miriam is a cougar of sorts. She falls head over heels at the first sight for Takeshi Kovacs. In her defense, any girl would! But, she has some other motives too for seducing him. When she realizes that Kovacs is not falling for her tricks, she stalks him to his hotel while wearing a biologically enhanced sleeve that has a special pheromone, admittedly, in her saliva, sweat, and...other places.
Lust takes Kovacs over and he ends up in bed with her, but, not without displaying a pair of eyes glittering with helplessness.
Intense Cage Fight In The Fight Drome
In the sixth episode, we watch an underground intense cage fight. Joel said in an interview that it was the roughest part to shoot and took a whole week to shoot those few minutes. The action scenes are breathtaking and never lose pace, even for a second.
Kovacs fights bloody and holds no bars while slamming many of them under his fist. We can truly see real deaths, real pain, and real dirt. That was extremely raw and surreal.
Viz A Viz
Joel plays Kovacs and Kovacs. He gets one sleeve to go on a pleasure vacation with Miriam and with the other, he takes care of the enemies. Too bad he couldn’t copy-paste the memories of one into the other! Instead, he has to decide which one of the two will stay alive if they want official freedom from the government.
The good news is the original gets to live. The viz a viz had to have been done twice and Joel absolutely killed it both times. Yeah, literally too!