Kleo (2022 German series -Netflix)
Granted, it takes some amount of courage to take a plunge into one of Netflix's many imported European mini-series.....(sometimes, subtitled, sometimes dubbed)
Not sorry at all I dove into this one......a quirky, ultra-violent mash-up of "Killing Eve", "Kill Bill", "Hanna" and every other smart-aleck action thriller featuring a kick-ass heroine.
Plus this one benefits enormously from its historic underpinnings......the collapse of the GDR, the brutal, infamous East German communist government and the reunification of the two Germanies. The resulting cultural shock and continued political rivalries of the newly blended country keep the show a cut above the usual wham-bam body-count Tarantino-isms that we've all come to expect.
But don't worry, you'll find more than enough punishing physical fights, bloody deaths and sudden eruptions of gunplay that could kill any character at any time. Wahooo.....
Caught in the demise of the GDR is loyal Stasi assassin Kleo (Jella Haase, whom you'll fall in love with even while she's single-handedly piling up the corpses.)
Unbeknownst to the luckless Kleo, one of her hits involved a guy with a red suitcase containing an globe-shattering political secret. To fully cover their tracks, the Stasi (including Kleo's own grandfather) frame and imprison her Inevitable inmate violence results in her heart wrenching loss of the unborn child she carried from her hook-up with a fellow Stasi spy
With the Berlin wall torn down and the two sides of the country reunited, Kleo's sprung from jail on a general amnesty. And she's fueled with fury, hellbent on working her way through the former Stasi chain of command until they're all dead and the hidden suitcase's secret revealed, no matter who it shakes up.
A parallel storyline that intersects with Kleo's belongs to Sven (Dimitrij Schaad) a hapless West German cop. To the derision and displeasure of his boss, he' still doggedly investigating Kleo's murder of that mystery spy with the red suitcase.....which puts him right in her path and sights.
Then all you have to do from this point is hang on for countless, twists, turns, and falling bodies that stack up through eight breathless episodes. (You can watch them in the original German with subtitles or if you want to pretend it's a pseudo Bond adventure, you can watch with everyone speaking in dubbed in British accents......)
Jella Haase, an elfin adorable redhead is this series most assuredly MVP. She's lethal subtly hilarious, sexy and loads of fun to watch.......the joy coming from the fact that you never know how she'll behave from one scene to the next. One hell of a discovery and I'm a fan for life.
BQ's final thought.....even you're wary of spending eight hours worth of time with a foreign TV show, try at least one episode of "Kleo"......then prepare to succumb to the remaining seven.
4 stars (****).
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