Hunters - TV Series Review

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Looking for some brand-new TV to keep you entertained during lockdown? One of Amazon Prime's best offerings is the intense and rollicking series one of Hunters, featuring a dangerously good Al Pacino in one of the lead roles.

Hunters feels like a homage to Quentin Tarantino - a cross between Inglorious Basterds and Kill Bill – that sees a group of Jewish-American citizens in the 1970's hunting down former Third Reich Nazis living in the USA and brutally killing them. The Nazis, in turn, are planning a Fourth Reich and world domination by infiltrating American society.



The story revolves around young American Jew, Jonah, whose Holocaust survivor grandmother, Ruth, is murdered. After witnessing her death, Jonah meets Meyer Offerman (Pacino) at her sitting shiva, who in turn introduces him to an unlikely group of Nazi hunters made up of a nun, an actor, a married older couple and a Black Power activist. The gang operates in secret, making it their mission to keep a dossier of all Nazis who they can locate in the USA and delivering their own form of trial and ultimately execution.

The series doesn't shy away from gore and violence, but often the real horror is displayed in flashbacks depicting Meyer and Ruth and their ordeal in the concentration camps during the Nazi regime. The cruelty of the Nazis is on full display here, which makes the Hunters' quest for vengeance even more understandable. The contrast in the grey bleakness of the flashback scenes to the gaudiness of Manhattan in the 1970s is stark, but it highlights the complete hopelessness felt by the Jews in the Holocaust and that in Hunters they are taking back some of their power.

The cast of Hunters is exceptional, led by a resurgent Al Pacino. Australian actor and writer Kate Mulvaney does us proud with her intriguing and nuanced performance as the gun-toting nun, Sister Harriet. Josh Radnor as the actor Lonny Flash has some of the funniest lines in the show and seems to relish the part. Logan Lerman as the newcomer Hunter, Jonah, starts the series with wide-eyed innocence, but his resolve quickly steels as his heart is forced to harden.

From the powerful opening scene in the first episode, Hunters had me utterly hooked. It's ten episodes are definitely not for the faint-hearted, but is a perfect series to binge on if you're a lover of Tarantino films.

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