If only she knew who she killed. Back then, in 1987, in the Berlin club “Big Eden”. But asking questions is not part of the job. Kleo (Jella Haase) is a contract killer for the Stasi, and although the murder goes according to plan, nothing works for Kleo afterwards. Someone betrays her, she goes to jail. Then came the turning point, the GDR is gone, the Stasi too. So Kleo wants to find out who put her in prison. And this story is told by the Netflix series “Kleo”.
In eight episodes, Kleo marches angrily from one bigwig to the next: Sorry, wasn’t responsible, just carried out orders. Babbling, Kleo touches poison cake and sews explosives into clothes while singing. If she has to, she flies to Mallorca to kill a former Stasi chief.
This woman would be hired immediately if you were planning to liquidate someone
Women who take bloodthirsty revenge and look cool at the same time have been known since Quentin Tarantino let Uma Thurman loose on her tormentor in “Kill Bill”. Despite her slightly socialist conservativeness, Kleo is also a nod to Tarantino, as she performs unearthly combat moves in a prison suit, shown here not with Nancy Sinatra, but with the GDR band Panta Rhei are highlighted.
But Kleo is more than one angry young woman. She is driven by a deep sense of morality, by the desire to establish justice for herself. She is hardly deterred by emotions, marching pragmatically past friends and men in the direction of revenge. The series doesn’t dare to do without the obligatory love banter and, so much can be revealed, the topic of motherhood, which is a bit of a shame because Kleo obviously gets along very well on his own and not every conflict in a woman’s life is necessarily capable of something with it have to do. In any case, Jella Haase alternates so effortlessly between a child-like killer and a disappointed woman that you would hire her immediately if you were thinking of liquidating someone.
Although “Kleo” tells of the time of reunification – of former Stasi employees who are now doing business with the Americans (“Binz becomes the LA of the East”), of anarchic Berlin and of authorities in which GDR is simply played on – is the series is not a political turning drama, but entertainment. There is only a faint mention of who will take responsibility when what was supposedly believed to be safe suddenly collapses. And then there is also the policeman Sven Petzold (Dimitrij Schaad). A West Berlin official, only Miami Vice in style, who follows Kleo’s heels, always the obligatory second too late.
This Stasi action comedy with feminist garlands was devised by Hanno Hackfort, Richard Kropf and Bob Konrad, who also invented “4 Blocks”. Their many brilliant ideas occasionally lead to a certain indecisiveness in the pace and temperature of the series. But above all, because the brilliant Jella Haase forms a nightmare smooching team with the no less brilliant Dimitrij Schaad, the series works. So good that they even Stephen King as “breath of fresh air” recommended. And he really knows a thing or two about storytelling.
Kleo, eight episodes, Netflix
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