The premise of the show is based over 360 years
in the future. Science has provided humans with
innovations that were once only a dream. Flying
cars, AI-generated services, and several medical
breakthroughs are some of the most prominent new
discoveries. However, on the top of the list is an
invention called the stack. It is a chip embedded
into the vertebrae at the back of the neck.
This device records a person’s memories and
consciousness. Some people also call it the
soul of modern humans as it contains data about
everything that has ever happened in a person’s
life. Using a stack, the riches have found a way
to live like immortals. When their bodies die,
all they have to do is transfer the stack to
a new body which they called the Sleeve.
That way, they can change sleeves again and again
and live forever, as long as the stack is intact.
The poor are also allowed to have such services
but it is not very convenient for them. Firstly,
buying a new sleeve costs a lot of money.
Sometimes, the less fortunate have to use
any sleeve they get which means a man’s
stack can be stuck in a woman’s body,
a child in an adult’s, and so on.
This is not a problem for the wealthy
because they clone their originalÂ
bodies to make customized sleeves. Â
Altered Carbon Full Movie Watch Online
So even if they die, they are automatically
brought back to life in a new clone.
In the new digitalized world, the prison
system has also changed. When someone is
convinced of a crime, their stack is taken out
of their bodies and kept confined. That way,
they do not get to live for a said period of
time until they complete their sentence. After
they serve their time, they are given random
sleeves to return to the normal world.
One morning in the prison’s medical center,
the inmates are being resleeved and released.
A guy in particular struggles to return to
life and hits the doctor in frustration.
The body belongs to a stranger but the person
wearing the body is a man named Takeshi Kovac.
He has been in prison for two and a half
centuries which is why he is confused.
The doctors calm him down before reporting that
he has served his sentence and is about to be
released. Takeshi looks at himself in a mirror and
sees a stranger staring back. He inquires whose
body he is in but even the doctors do not know.
Two hundred fifty years ago, Takeshi used to be a
prominent member of a rebel group called
the Envoys. They are painted as maniacs
by historians because they wanted to destroy all
stacks in the world and bring back mortality.
A flashback shows us how Takeshi was arrested
years ago. He was with a partner in a hotel
room when the police known as the protectorate
barged inside. They had already killed all the
Envoys in their hideout hence, Takeshi
was the last envoy to be arrested.
After catching up with the world, Takeshi
goes outside and meets a police lieutenant
named Kristin. She has been sent by someone
powerful to give him a ride. Takeshi has a lot
of questions that she claims will be answered
when he meets someone named Bancroft.
Bancroft is the most powerful man in the modern
world. He is the wealthiest and has connections in
about every part of the world. Initially, Takeshi
was never supposed to be brought back to society.
But for some reason, Bancroft wanted him out.
He and Kristin are received by Bancroft’s wife
Miriam. She asks Kristin to go away and brings
Takeshi inside the house. He senses that she is
trying to seduce him which is strange considering
her husband is the wealthiest man on earth.
Takeshi finally meets Bancroft and inquires
why he has been brought back to life.
Bancroft gets to the point and reveals that he
was killed a month ago. His data was backed up
so he came back to life but he lost the memory of
the last forty-eight hours before his death.
The police have done their investigation and
concluded that Bancroft committed the unthinkable.
However, he believes their investigation
is bullshit. He is a hundred percent sure
he would never do something to harm himself
and even if he did, he wouldn’t fail.
Hence, the only possible explanation for the
death is that he was murdered. He needed the
most intelligent mind in the world to solve
the case for him which is why Takeshi has been
revived. Before being mass murdered, Envoys were
a powerful group. They learned the great power of
intuition and problem solving which still
remains a secret to the rest of the world.
Currently, only Takeshi has those skills so
Bancroft wants him to find his murderer is in
turn for his freedom. Takeshi gives it a
thought and refuses to help him. The main
aim of Envoys was to go against people
like Bancroft. Hence, he would rather
be stuck in a stack forever than help him.
Still, Bancroft gives him a day to think it over.
Following the conversation, Takeshi
goes to the slums part of the town and
buys a bunch of illegal pills. He eventually
ends up in the red light zone, surrounded
by virtual advertisements of brothels.
Since he is high, the advertisement looks real
and he almost loses his mind. Fortunately,
Kristin comes to his aid and gives him an
ad blocker. Takeshi questions her being too
interested in him but Kristin argues that it
is because he is a national terrorist.
The two then go to a strip club to discuss
Bancroft’s death. Kristin was the lead cop in the
investigation which is why she is positive that it
was a case of self-harm. Takeshi doesn’t believe
her but he has no interest in taking the case
so he dismisses the conversation altogether.
He leaves first and goes to an AI hotel down
the road. The owner of the place is an AI
named Poe. He hasn’t had a customer in over
fifty years and is excited to finally receive one.
Before Takeshi can check in, he is approached by
a hitman named Dimi and his henchmen.
Dimi has been sent by someone to fetch
Takeshi. But when Takeshi insults him, he derails
from the primary plan and gets aggressive. Poe
cleverly tells Takeshi that once he pays, he will
be entitled to the hotel’s security services.
Amidst the fight, the Envoy manages to pay
and the opponents are killed by the hotel’s
automated security system. Dimi also
dies before revealing who sent him.
A while later, Kristin and her partner arrive to
investigate the shootings. Dimi’s presence in the
gang tells them that the person who sent the thugs
is someone high profile. But this also means it
will be very difficult to track them back.
When everything calms down, Takeshi goes into
the elevator and gets high once again. Then, he
imagines talking to the leader of Envoys Quell.
She was the one true love of his life before
she was killed in the mass murder of Envoys.
In the following scene, we see a fisherman
finding a dead body in the sea. It is of a
prostitute named Mary Lou. Back in the hotel,
Takeshi is visited by Bancroft’s lawyer.
She brings him to Psychasec, the place where
the clones of wealthy people are kept and dealt
with. They are here to watch the surveillance
video of the day when the murder took place.
It turns out Bancroft was in Osaka for half
of the day before he returned to the city.
But the only video taken after his return
is where Miriam kisses him briefly.
As he inspects the video, Bancroft arrives
and Takeshi agrees to help him in turn for
his freedom. He plans to fulfill the purpose of
the Envoys after he gains complete freedom.
At the police station, Kristin is asked to talk to
a bereaved mother about her daughter’s dead body.
She is the mother of the prostitute, Mary Lou,
whose body was found in the sea that morning.
Kristin calms the mother down but
is interested in the case.
Back in the hotel, Poe shows Takeshi all the
videos of death threats made upon Bancroft that
year. There are more than four thousand videos
with different people on them and anyone could be
the killer. But with Takeshi’s deduction skills,
he drops the options to twenty videos. Out of
them, only one man hasn’t shown his face.
Poe traces the man’s address and finds out he
is named Elliot. In the following scene, Takeshi
goes to meet Elliot who mistakes him for an enemy.
He holds Takeshi at gunpoint but it
is easy for him to overpower the man.
After tying him to a chair, Takeshi sits on
his station and goes to the virtual place.
There, he meets Elliot’s daughter Lizzie who is in
a dark alleyway alone and scared. Elliot explains
that his wife was arrested for hacking and his
daughter Lizzie disappeared right after. One day
before her disappearance, she said that she was
in a relationship with Bancroft. This made Elliot
believe Bancroft is the cause of her disappearance
and which is why he sent the death threat.
Elliot managed to find Lizzie’s stack but her
body is dead and he cannot afford a new sleeve.
Moreover, she has suffered great mental
trauma and has shut down from life,
still stuck in the alleyway she was thrown at.
After finding out everything about Elliot, Takeshi
comes to the conclusion that he is not the killer.
Following the encounter, he goes to the city’s
Envoy museum. He meets a little girl who is extra
chatty with him. The girl seems to know something
about him but Takeshi fails to recognize it.
Then, he takes a trip to the red light zone
again because he has discovered that Lizzie
used to be a prostitute. To investigate,
Takeshi buys a girl, pretending to be Lizzie’s
mother in a man’s sleeve. The girl doesn’t
doubt him and reveals that Bancroft was a regular
customer. He likes to choke girls until they die,
which he has done to many prostitutes. However,
all of them think of him as a good man because he
buys them an upgraded sleeve after they die.
The prostitute promises to talk around and find
out more about what happened to Lizzie. When
Takeshi steps out of the brothel, he finds Elliot
pointing his gun at him. He wants to know why
Takeshi is interested in Lizzie but before getting
an answer, they are attacked by robbers.
Takeshi kills all of them and ends up in jail
by the end of the night. He is eventually bailed
out by Bancroft’s lawyer. Upon reaching the hotel,
Takeshi finds Miriam waiting for him. She seduces
him and the two end up making love to each other.
What they do not know is that someone is
recording them through a secret camera.
The following morning, Takeshi dreams of himself
and his sister reading stories when they were
young. Both of them had a traumatic childhood
which he doesn’t like to talk about. Later,
Poe shows him an invitation from
Bancroft to an exclusive party.
The attendees of the party include everyone who
might want Bancroft dead so Takeshi has to be
there to investigate. At the same time, Kristin
is also invited as the head of security for the
night. She knows that Bancroft doesn’t like her
which makes the invitation suspicious. She is
skeptical to go until she discovers that every
suspect from Mary Lou’s death case will be at
the party. This will give her an opportunity to
investigate which she doesn’t want to miss.
Somewhere else, Takeshi again goes to Elliot
and asks him to be his backup for the party.
In turn, he promises to provide Lizzie with
a virtual treatment for her mental health.
Elliot doesn’t dwell before accepting
the offer for his daughter.
Then, they go to the hotel and meet Poe.
He will be Lizzie’s companion for the time
she will be treated in the virtual world. He
creates a nice space for her and brings her
away from the dirty alleyway she was in. The
price is expensive but Takeshi has a tab given
to him by the wealthiest man on the planet.
For the first time in years, Lizzie speaks and
talks to Poe. Elliot is relieved that
she is finally making progress.
In the next scene, Takeshi arrives at the party
and is received by Miriam. The highlight of the
party is sleeve combat about to take place later.
A married couple will fight each other to death
and the one who wins will win an upgraded sleeve
for their partner. It is a win-win situation,
although they have to suffer until
they die at the hands of each other.
Takeshi and Kristin share a brief conversation
before they get to looking for murders
for the respective cases they are working on.
Kristin notices a man looking at her from the
side of the room. He seems suspicious so she
tells her colleague to check his profile.
However, the camera embedded in her
eye doesn’t seem to record the guy.
Elliot, on the other hand, is disguised
as a waiter. He goes to the surveillance
room to steal CCTV footage from the
day his daughter disappeared.
In the middle of the party, Takeshi notices Miriam
entering a hidden room behind the bookshelves. He
follows her and catches her having sex with
the head of security. But it turns out the
woman isn’t Miriam but one of her daughters in her
mother’s sleeve. Takeshi interrogates her about
her father’s death because she might have dressed
up as her mother and killed him that night.
The woman, however, argues that she will be
left penniless as per Bancroft’s will if he
dies. Hence, twenty-one of his children could
be crossed out from the list of suspects.
A while later, the sleeve combat
takes place. In the middle of it,
Bancroft orders the male fighter to
fight and defeat Takeshi for a more
advanced upgrade. Takeshi is forced into the
battlefield and he has to fight even though he
doesn’t want to kill the couple.
In the end, Takeshi kills the male
opponent at his wife’s request so they get
a better upgrade and come back to life.
After the party, Takeshi goes to the brothel
yet again to meet the girl from yesterday.
But she betrays him by drugging him. When
he opens his eyes, he is being pushed into
a hospital-like facility. It turns out to
be a virtual toture room where people are
tortured and killed in the virtual world, again
and again until they confess to their crimes.
He has been kidnapped by Dimi’s
younger twin brother whose name
is also Dimi. The guy is a sadistic maniac
who wants revenge for his brother’s death.
He starts the interrogation by beating Takeshi
up with a chain and strangling him.
Then, he is chained to a metal table and
his shoulder is broken. Back in the hotel,
Elliot goes through the surveillance footage but
finds nothing about Lizzie. All he knows is that
she was tortured to the point of insanity. He
wants to meet her but Poe doesn’t allow him
since it might mess with her treatment.
Back in the toture chamber, Dimi addresses
Takeshi as Riker and asks him who he is working
for. Eventually, Takeshi registers that Riker is
the name of the sleeve he is wearing. But since
he knows nothing about the guy, it makes Dimi
angrier. While getting beaten to death, Takeshi
remembers Quell’s training in the Envoy camp.
The Envoys were taught what to do at times like
this. The main trick is to use Hallucination,
displacement, and retreat as moves in a
game. First by showing the perpetrator
that you are strong, then by breaking the
shell, and lastly by striking back.
However, it is much easier said
than done because Takeshi hardly
gets a chance to think amidst the toture.
Meanwhile, at the police station, Kristin is
inspecting the video from Bancroft’s party. She
clearly remembers seeing the strange man staring
at her but none of the cameras have caught him. He
has somehow found a way to trick all surveillance
cameras which could be huge trouble later on.
Kristin calls the guy a ghostwalker and continues
looking more into the disappearing technique.
Somewhere else, Dimi plucks all of Takeshi’s
fingernails, then shoots him in the
head. After suffering a horrible death,
he comes back to life to be tortured again.
Similarly, Takeshi is burned, his limbs are torn,
and his eyes are gouged out but Dimi doesn’t
get the answer he is looking for.
In Takeshi’s head, he remembers the time he
suffered the same pain in training. Quell’s words
act as motivation for him as he continuously plays
her in his mind. When all the usual techniques
do not work, Dimi buys the special toture package
and brings out a box of carnivore reptiles. Then,
he makes a hole in Takeshi’s stomach and
lets the reptile into his body. It is the
worst pain the Envoy has ever felt, one that no
amount of training could prepare him for.
He starts talking to himself, repeating
the words, hallucination, displacement,
and retreat. Suddenly, he reaches a higher level
of consciousness and is able to free his hands.
To take control, he rips his own heart out and
ends up being disconnected from the VR world.
The plan works and he comes back to reality.
But he is still in the toture facility
surrounded by workers who are being paid
to break him. To get out of the situation,
he pretends to be a protectorate officer who
has been transferred to Riker’s body.
The workers panic and free him from the wires,
asking for forgiveness. Dimi tries to stop them
but they care about their jobs more than
their clients. However, they regret their
decision as soon as Takeshi is let out because
he shoots and kills everyone in the room.
Then, he walks out with Dimi’s head in his
hands and meets Elliot outside. A while later,
Kristin finds out what happened and barges into
Takeshi’s room to ask him what is going on.
Takeshi, in turn, asks her what her relationship
with Riker is. At first, she denies knowing anyone
named Riker but it turns out he is her boyfriend.
He was a framed cop whose Stack was taken out as
punishment. In turn, his body was given to TakeshiÂ
which is why she has been following him.
