Jochen Horst, left, and Blanca Suárez in “Jaguar” (2021). IMDb photo
She’s not “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” but then no one has ever topped Rooney Mara in this kind of action.
SERIES INFO
‘JAGUAR’
In the 1960s, Spain became a home to hundreds of survivors of the Mauthausen camp. Isabel, a young Spanish woman, is one of them. She is looking for Skorzeny, Europe’s most dangerous man, but she is not alone.
Action, drama, history
Creators: Ramón Campos, Gema R. Neira
Stars: Blanca Suárez, Iván Marcos, Óscar Casas
Isabel Garrido as Blanca Suarez (“El Bar” “Cable Girls” ) with a twist of the wrist, takes down a fit and fine attacker, and how she keeps him from getting up without messing his or her hair is interesting.
As she flees a quartet of men, (all good guys, you’ll see) who chase her through the back streets, as she leaps fences, darts through doors and scales fire escapes, we’re compelled to pay attention.
Maybe these guys just want to ask her where she went to school, and maybe have a glass of wine while they’re asking. Not likely.
As the first segment from Ramon Campo’s creation flows, we’re introduced to them, a Hollywood mix of death camp survivors, older and numerically tattooed, some young and handsome; coming as Marvel-like Avengers. They have, over the years, emerged as a Jewish “Magnificent Seven” band of brothers who have focused on Madrid, in their endless chase to bring the escaped Nazis to justice.
It’s not top drawer, but stay with it; it’s not all cliche heavy. It moves, plummets and soars from time to time, and it’s fun. That ain’t bad when you compare it to “American Rust” and “Mare of Eastland.”
We first see Isabel on the streets of 1960 Madrid.
Isabel dresses in Goodwill purchased Donna Karan black, walking with an eye to the side and the back, checking her area while looking in a store window.
We meet her again as a neat and focused waitress in an upscale Madrid restaurant, tending to a group of men of various ages, speaking Spanish and, look out, with German accents.
There’s some whispering with another girl who supplies her with a vial of deadly poison.
“Don’t get it on your hands. You’d be dead in seconds.”
Isabel’s focus is on one man at the table. In the rest of the first segment, we learn more about him, as the story floats back into the infamous death camp Mauthausen.
He’s Otto Bachman (Stefan Weinert) the former commandant of the camp, who, as we view it early on, brutally murdered Isabel’s father in front of her.
Weinert needs to play his “Christopher Waltz” down a bit. As Bachman, we can hear his hisses as he uses every trick but the heel clicking and a monocle.
How our tiny Isabel survived the camps as a little girl and managed to become a lovely ninja warrior, will take another segment to reveal, I think.
Most of the players are very good and real, and I’m betting in the next couple of segments, they’ll excel.
“Jaguar” is not a throw away by any means. It’s about revenge and justice, well filmed and played.
The Spanish music and the flamenco touch are pleasant to the ear.
“Jaguar” streams on Netflix.
J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.
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