Kleo is a new, just released, German Netflix series. I literally stumbled on it, as I haven't watched Netflix for a while, but I was temporarily idled due to medical fun and games and there was literally nothing worth watching on regular television. I started watching it as it the summation of it on Netflix suggested it'd be the sort of movie I might like. I like spy films and mysteries, and I'm not wholly adverse to shoot 'em ups, even when, or perhaps particularly when, they're superficial.
Well, it exceeded my expectation.
Set in the 1980s, the eight part series is frankly very difficult to describe. It follows the story of East German female Stasi (East German state police) assassin Kleo Straub as she goes from being an "unofficial agent" of the Stasi whose job is killing targets they designate, to being set up and imprisoned, to being released in 1989 as East Germany begins to collapse, at which time she's dedicated to finding those who wrongly accused her and killing them.
And that's all just in the first episode.
Added to that, we have a failed West German policeman who was present in The Big Eden, a nightclub, the night that Kleo performs her last killing for the DDR, who can never get quite over it and who, upon Kleo's release, realizes that she's the woman he identified as the killer the night of the murder.
All of that doesn't do it justice, however.
The film features far more twists and turns than most spy movies, and makes the tricky loyalties in the John Wick films look like child's play. Kleo, the assassin herself, played by Jella Haase, is impossible not to like, even though she's clearly partially unhinged and trying to get through life with a badly damaged soul. Sven Petzold, the detective, is dogged in his pursuit, but he's also hapless and somewhat incompetent in his job. Indeed, as an example, it's obvious about halfway through the film that Sven at first deeply likes Kleo and then is falling in love with her even though she's so messed up that he has to at one point make her promise to quit killing people, which she does simply because he requests it, not because she has any real concept of right and wrong beyond being a dedicated Communist.
None of this, however, comes close to actually describing the plot.
In terms of its history, which is why we review certain films here, this film does a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the times in Germany and Europe. The East Germans, whom in this film are mostly those associated with the Communist government, can hardly gasp what is happening to them as their government collapses. As many of them are its agents, they're dedicated to an institution that's collapsing for the most part, while some of them are rapidly moving on into capitalism. The West Germans are pretty willing to take advantage of the situation. More than that, however, West Germany is shown to have become a multicultural post Volk society, whereas East Germany has not, something even demonstrated by the actors chosen in the film. All of the East German characters are figures that we'd recognize from classic films involving the Germans of World War Two, even though that is not what they are portraying. They're all very German (although some of the actors actually are not). The West Germans, however, appear not only more modern and 1980s "cool", but many of them are clearly not ethnically German, that most obviously being the case for West German intelligence agent Min Sun, who is played by Chinese-born, but German raised, Yun Huang.
Backgrounds are correct for the period, including the funky German techno music that plays a role in the series. Clothing is as well, with that also providing a difference between the East and the West. Firearm wise the maker was careful to equip the East Germans with Soviet type handguns, whereas the West Germans carry the iconic German PPK.
The film includes reference to actual characters from the period, and not just in the greater sense of being background for the times. The head of the East German police is a character in the film and not fictionalized as to name, for instance. Margot Honecker, Erich Honecker's third wife, shows up as a character. These insertions are done so well, that offhand references to fictional events become difficult to distinguish from ones that didn't happen, as in references to the "woman who attempted to kill Reagan" and the details of that event, which never occurred.
This being a German movie, it should be noted that there is seemingly an obligation that Haase be seen topless at some point. In this case, the nudity is basically limited to a single scene, but it's quite graphic. There must be a clause in the contracts for German actresses that they have to appear nude at some point in a film.
Anyhow, It's very well done and with watching.
As a note, this is a German language movie, but it has well done English subtitles. An option to listen to it with British English dubbing is available, but I don't care for that much personally. The subtitles are very close translations of the German, with departures due to German idioms that don't granslate perfectly.
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