Mario’s Musings (Quarantine Edition): Hunters
Following up High Castle, I decided to jump into Jordan Peele’s Hunters, starring Al Pacino and Logan Lerman, because apparently I didn’t get enough Nazis after four seasons. But hey, they at least put a somewhat superhero spin on it.
A superhero spin on a show about hunting Nazis? What are you talking about? Well, let’s just say that the main character, Jonah Heidelbaum, is a hybrid of Bruce Wayne/Peter Parker in the terms of his “origin story”. One day, he’s an insanely smart kid that’s selling weed to help pay the bills for his grandmother Ruth, the next, he’s witnessing her murder at the hands of an unknown assailant. But I’m quickly getting ahead of myself here in regards to the story. The main crux of Hunters is about well, hunters, Nazi Hunters to be exact. Of course, not all the Nazis faced justice at the end of World War II, and this show focuses on a fictionalized account of the people that are hunting the ones that escaped to America.
Leading the hunt is none other than Meyer Offerman, survivor of the Holocaust, along with fellow survivors Mindy and Murray Markowitz, actor Lonny Flash, Roxy Jones, Sister Harriet, and Joe Mizushima. Their job is to bring to justice to any Nazis living in America in secret, and Jonah is brought into their world when he meets Meyer while sitting Shiva for his grandmother. He learns of their history together, and thus, discovers Meyer’s quest to hunt Nazis, and thus discovers his grandmother’s killer. On their heels is FBI Agent Millie Morris, whose investigation into a murder in Florida leads her to making the same discovery.
Honestly? It’s a good, not great show. My main issue is the goofy grindhouse style scenes they would incorporate into the show, especially for the intros of each member of Meyer’s team, and more importantly, the fictionalized accounts of things that happened at Auschwitz, such as the human chess set one officer set up with a Jewish grandmaster. The scenes at the camps were unsettling enough; they didn’t need to dive into the absurd with torture of that nature.
Performance wise everyone brings it, as for the first time in years it’s kind of shocking to see Al Pacino play it low key, and not stuck in “Big Boy from Dick Tracy” mode. Josh Radnor from How I Met Your Mother is insanely likable as Lonny Flash, having some of my favorite one-liners in the show. And then there’s the introduction to the entire show, which focuses of Dylan Baker’s Jimmi Simpson. It sets the stage for the whole show but unfortunately doesn’t reach the insane expectations that intro sets. You would think Simpson is going to play a much bigger role or at least be a larger character than he was, but the character doesn’t live up to that intro.
I guess I can recommend this to you if you’re in the mood for something different. The grindhouse scenes don’t fit in with the show at all despite taking the events taking place in the 1970s. The scenes during the Holocaust are very uncomfortable until they get to ridiculous stuff like the human chess pieces. The meat of the show is really the interactions among the characters themselves, which honestly, was my favorite part of the show. So if you’re in the mood for some Nazi hunting, give it a watch.