As a vile group deserving its place as a reliably satisfying punching bag (or, oftentimes, much worse), Nazis have a been a pop cultural mainstay as the worst modern history has to offer, earning a well-deserved ass-kicking from the likes of Captain America, Indiana Jones, and even Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. One thing all those heroes have in common is the pulpy root of their respective approaches to storytelling, one where the spectacle of hunting down members of the Reich and dispatching them with extreme prejudice is the appeal of the heroes’ journey. That’s more or less the conceit of Amazon’s newest series Hunters, a stylish period drama that toys with history to both condemn the enduring evil of the Nazi regime and to take great pleasure in seeing its members wiped out of existence.
Created by David Weil (who also serves as co-showrunner alongside Nikki Toscano), the series is not shy about acknowledging its inspirations or pulpy aspirations. Set in the late ‘70s, Hunters imagines a world where Nazis fled Germany following the war — some German scientists were brought over to the U.S. via the very real Operation Paperclip — only to set up nice comfortable lives for themselves in the States and, as the show’s rapidly expanding plot would have it, attempt to establish a Fourth Reich, with Lena Olin’s the Colonel in charge. The series begins with a backyard cookout hosted by Dylan Baker’s Biff Simpson that soon devolves into a bloody rampage that’s so cartoonishly over the top it’s all but impossible to take anything that happens afterward seriously.
That’s a major concern for the series, as even though it wants to present itself as a Nazi-killing thriller that has more in common with dime-store novels and comic books than, say, actual history, it’s still playing around with themes and ideas that are very real and very unsettling. Having a laugh at the expense of Nazis is a tried-and-true method of placing them in media intended for mass consumption, as the aforementioned Tarantino, as well as Steven Spielberg and Mel Brooks, can attest. But Hunters wants to have it both ways, depicting its villains as both horrifically dangerous and clownishly incompetent, sometimes in the same breath. The result drives a wedge between the audience and the material (or at least its intentions), making it tough to discern exactly what the show wants to be and how it wants to be thought of.
In addition to starring Al Pacino as the aged Holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter Meyer Offerman and Logan Lerman as his reluctant and too-smart-for-his-own-good pupil, Jonah Heidelbaum, Hunters is executive produced by Jordan Peele. That name helps assuage concerns of the show’s intent, as it seems to be taking a page from Peele’s own book, subverting the expectations typically associated with the subject matter by approaching them via the conventions of an unexpected genre. Whereas Peele used horror to address matters of systemic racism in the U.S. in Get Out, Hunters infuses its subject with the gleeful violence of pulp fiction. The results are somewhat mixed.
Hunters begins with a 90-minute premiere that, despite being filled with plenty of Nazi killings and flashbacks to WWII, somehow feels as though it is as long as the series itself. The immense glut of television being what it is today, shows should be compelled to get to the point as quickly as possible, especially when the rest of the series is available for the viewer to binge. But Hunters takes its time, committing the sin of beginning its story much too early, turning the feature-length premiere into an inadvertent slog that may have viewers questioning how soon they need to return.
In the show’s defense, there is a great deal going on and it’s clear that Weil and Toscano want to lay all their cards on the table as quickly as possible. This results in a number of plot threads and characters being introduced at once, which isn’t so much confusing as it is a disorienting disservice to the likes of Greg Hunter, as American-born Nazi, Travis Leich, and to Jerrika Hinton, who plays FBI agent Millie Morris. Both are handed subplots that are sure to intersect with Meyer and Jonah’s arc, but early on their appearances only tend to derail an already distracted premiere. More troubling is the sense that Millie’s storyline is unfolding in an entirely different show, widening the already conspicuous disconnect between her character and the larger plot(s) of the main story.
Still, the series manages to deliver enough Nazi-hunting thrills to make it worth a watch, if not an immediate binge-watch. Though its propensity for violence and its over-the-top antics are mediated by its dark sense of humor and what seems to be its self-awareness, Hunters turns in an entertaining enough series that’s ultimately worth it in the end.
Hunters season 1 premieres Friday, February 21 exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.