Jordan Peele has once again delivered audiences with a suspenseful real-life tale in Amazon's newest original series "Hunters." "Hunters" stars Al Pacino front and center. "Hunters" ends up being a mid-level drama series, bolstered by a strong cast. As the season progressed, "Hunters" developed a heart, so that it could delve into more serious themes. The last half of the season was built up by the drama and the reality of righteous violence.
"Hunters" is really a 10-episode movie
"Hunters" is partly real-life and part fiction. The series follows a team of Nazi hunters in 1977, headed by Al Pacino's Meyer Offerman. The team discovers a conspiracy launched by former SS officers attempting to reconquer the world and start the Fourth Reich. "Hunters" manages to deliver moments of grit and campiness. Some characters are well-grounded, while others are merely satirical. With the first season being 10 episodes long, the reality is that the series is just made up of five or six episodes, stretched over 10 episodes.
While "Hunters" delivers on some levels, it struggles to find its footing.
Is it an episodic episode or just a lengthy 10-hour movie? "Hunters" has been compared to Amazon's popular series "The Boys." "The Boys" and "Hunters" both deal with an angry man suffering a loss and being recruited into a team of revengers, working hard to bring down a giant evil that walks among them.
'Hunters' uses true history to move the story forward
While "The Boys" is set in the world of "real life" superheroes, "Hunters" often makes comparisons between Pacino's team and Batman, the X-Men and other similar masked justice hunters. "Hunters" uses real-life history for its grounding, and not just the fact that six million Jews were killed by Nazis in World War II, but the reality of "Operation Paperclip." "Operation Paperclip," allowed at least a thousand Nazi scientists into the United States to work for the government in order to get a leg up on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The United States government ended up giving these Nazis new names and lives, and now in "Hunters" this has led to a radical new faction that wants to use bio-warfare to exterminate more lives. As the team works to right past wrongs, they are also uncovering a new Nazi plan to devastate mankind. The pilot episode introduces viewers to Jonah, whose grandmother was killed by a Nazi. Jonah also learns that the grandmother was a Nazi verifier. She was the one who made sure the targets were actually bad guys before the Hunters took action. Jonah eventually ends up joining the Nazi hunters.
"Hunters" is Al Pacino's first main TV role since "Angels in America." He anchors the series and gives the story strength. Pacino also gives the character a mystery. "Hunters" comes off as respectful to history, while other times, it comes off as insensitive.