Jaguar, from Spain, is a Netflix series about a group of Nazi hunters in 1960s Madrid. It’s about an interesting part of Spanish history, but otherwise is a pretty standard action thriller.
Blanca Suárez stars in Jaguar, which is what attracted me to it. She’s been a favorite ever since I discovered Cable Girls. Here she is tough and a fighter. The series is heavily male. She holds her own in this crowd, however.
Isabel (Blanca Suárez) is in Madrid looking for a Nazi named Otto Bachmann (Stefan Weinert). He killed her father the day they arrived in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Her brother also died in this camp. Isabel was a child of 7 or 8 and was sent to work in one of the officer’s homes as a servant.
After WWII, Nazis were protected in Spain by Hitler’s good buddy Franco. Many of them went there and lived well and undisturbed.
Isabel wants to kill this particular Nazi, and she has found him. She now works in a German themed restaurant and waits on him.
Isabel doesn’t know it, but Bachmann is also of interest to a small cell of Nazi hunters who want to use him to get to Aribert Heim (Jochen Horst). Heim was called Dr. Death or the Butcher of Mauthausen. The Nazi hunters notice Isabel lurking about and figure out what she’s doing.
They bring her into their lair and explain that they want, not vengeance, but justice. They want to bring Nazi criminals to trial, and they want her to help. After some arguing about goals, they agree to work together to get Heim and Bachmann.
All of them survived one or another of the concentrations camps. The leader is Lucena (Iván Marcos). There’s Sordo (Adrián Lastra). Sordo is translated as Deaf Man, which doesn’t make much sense because his tongue was cut out and he can’t speak well but he hears just fine. Castro (Óscar Casas) is a young man. The fourth man is Marsé (Francesc Garrido), who does most of the driving.
The plan is for Isabel to attract the attention of Bachmann’s wife and for Lucena and Isabel to pose as a married couple and get to know the Bachmanns as friends. That way they can get into their quarters and bug the place to get intel on when Heim might show up in Madrid.
The plan is dangerous, but works fairly well. Before it’s all over there are many action scenes, car chases, explosions, fires, and all the usual action stuff. Guns that never run out of bullets, people who get shot but don’t die, you know, the usual.
Visually, the series was fantastic looking and beautifully shot. There were many scenes where the characters were surrounded by Spanish art masterpieces – the gruesome ones of murders and death and war. If you’ve visited a museum in Madrid, you may recognize some of it.
There were quite a few flashbacks to give the background of each character. Toward the end of the season, the flashbacks were not very well handled and a bit confusing. The season ended with Isabel declaring herself to be the Jaguar, which suggests that a second season of her leading the way in another Nazi hunting action thriller might be possible.
Here’s a look at the trailer.
What do you think? Are you going to watch Blanca Suárez prove her action star cred?