Executive produced by Jordan Peele, and starring Al Pacino -- fully starring too, not just in a recurring role or a glamour cameo where his character gets killed off quickly -- Hunters is a mostly effective B-movie concept stretched into series form, featuring a strong cast and a wonky balance of tones.
When the show starts, its strength lies in its pulpiness; its Tarantino-lite qualities. But as the season progresses, naturally, Hunters has to discover a heart, a weight, in order to mine more substantial themes. So the back half is more emboldened by the drama and introspective aspects about righteous violence. Still, there's hardly a time when these two sensibilities don't grate against each other somewhat.

Centered on a ragtag crew of Nazi hunters in 1977 who uncover a conspiracy concocted by ex-SS officers to conquer the world and create a Fourth Reich, Hunters is capable of leveling you with moments of transcendent grit while also confounding you with surreal campiness. Some characters seem to exist in one type of story, a more grounded and solemn tale, while others almost seem satirical. Also, nestled inside the 10 episodes is the usual type of excess and bulk you'll find in most streaming shows nowadays. This is really five or six episodes of story stretched out over 10 (with a 90-minute pilot, no less!). But that just seems to be the typical M.O. for the binge-model.
Hunters: Season 1 Gallery

While wrestling with tone, Hunters also struggles to find its format, landing somewhere between a Nazi/case-of-the-week structure that delivers earnest "episodes," and one of those sprawling "this is really a 10-hour movie" monstrosities. That being said, Hunters actually has a lot in common with Amazon's biggest hit to date, The Boys, in that both deal with the recruitment of an angry young man who's suffering a loss into a team of revengers out to bring down a giant evil that's hiding in plain sight. And while The Boys deals with the fantastical world of "real life" superheroes, Hunters makes a point, more than once, to draw parallels between Al Pacino's vigilante team and the likes of Batman, the X-Men, and other masked justice-seekers.

Hunters, however uses real history for its baseline. And not just the six million Jewish lives lost in World War II, but the American-born, and funded, "Operation Paperclip" which brought a thousand or so Nazi scientists into the States to advance our own interests in the Cold War against the Soviets. These war criminals were given new lives and identities in our country and, for the purposes of Hunters, this sick and twisted project has wrought a radical faction that now seeks to use bio-warfare to exterminate more lives. So not only are our anti-heroes out to right past wrongs, but they're serendipitously, for the sake of 1977 stakes, uncovering a new "Hail Hydra"-style plot to devastate modern humanity.



The pilot episode, "In the Belly of the Whale," spends its feature-length runtime indoctrinating Logan Lerman's Jonah into the new resistance. Reeling from the death of his grandmother, Jonah discovers that his beloved "bubbe" had a secret separate life as a Nazi verifier (she'd make sure the targets were actually bad guys before extreme measures were taken), for a group of exterminators headed by Pacino's Meyer Offerman - a man who shares a twisty-turny history with Jonah's family. While FBI agent Millie Morris (Jerrika Hinton) starts uncovering things from her side of the law, Jonah meets Meyer's crew - consisting of a lineup that lovingly lampoons '70s exploitation films, like Josh Radnor's disgraced actor Lonny, Louis Ozawa's 'Nam vet Joe, Kate Mulvany's "nun with a mother***ing gun" Sister Harriet, and Tiffany Boone's Roxy Jones - all of whom could star in their own cult B-movie. In fact, Lonny is the star of cult B-movies.

Not mentioned above are Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane's Murray and Mindy, as the team's spycraft senior citizens. Like Meyer, they're concentration camp survivors and come complete with their own tragic, and wrenching, backstory. Murray and Mindy feel, blessedly, like they're part of a loftier, more reverent series. Their story produces some of Hunters' finest moments, as both actors are stunning and their arcs are truly emotional. Again though, talking about tone, they feel miles away from - say - Dylan Baker's "Biff Simpson," a secret Nazi who's spent 30 years becoming a top-level Washington insider. Baker is good, as always, but Biff's story plays out like parody, and it feels like he doesn't quite belong in the same world as Murray and Mindy.


Pacino, for his first big ongoing TV role (since 2003's Angels in America), does a great job of anchoring this saga. Because he's Al Pacino, he immediately gifts the story with heft, even in times when it doesn't deserve it. Also, because he's Al Pacino, you never quite know what Meyer is up to. You feel both safe and scared in his presence. And though some of the silly, winking meta-aspects in Hunters might suggest otherwise, the show is at its best when it actually starts questioning Meyer's motives and methods and the story starts suggesting "mercy" as an option. Of course, there can't be too much of that going around since the Nazis are plotting their 1977 version of Project Insight, but in small doses, in mindful conversations, this examination of whether monster-hunting can turn you into the very thing you're fighting against feels like a meaningful thing to grapple with.

Lerman serves the narrative well as Jonah, the young man who will either succeed Meyer in his dark designs to obliterate the Nazis at all cost or end the movement in the name of what's morally right. Though he'd like to take after his grandmother, Jonah finds himself slowly donning the cruel cloak of Meyer - a man who's forsaken his own soul so that others may be free. Pacino and Lerman all but carry the full brunt of this series, so it's a good thing they work well together. The rest of the cast too, despite the fact that some characters play more cartoonishly than others, give the show a necessary leg up - as well as guest pop-ins like John Noble and Judd Hirsch.

Verdict

At times, Hunters feels ridiculous and insensitive, while in other moments it comes off as incredibly respectful. Meaning, it runs the full spectrum of tones and sensibilities when it comes to telling a bloody, sinister story about hunting down murderers as revenge for past atrocities. As scattershot as it is though, its best moments outshine its clunkiest. The performances are strong, the twists are fun, and the conspiratorial spine carries the crusade nicely.