Hunters (series)

The Hunters is a 2020 Amazon series about a group of seven Nazi hunters.

2 out of 10 stars.  I’ve actually watched several documentaries on Simon Wiesenthal, the actual Nazi Hunter, and have listened to him speak.  He’s a gentle man, nothing like the Meyer Offerman character in The Hunters.  It’s clear they modeled Meyer after Simon and that’s very disappointing. 

This series is painful to watch, literally.  The music is loud and obnoxious.  The camera work is up close, takes in too much detail, and is shaky like a handheld camera.  The plot is non-linear and parts of it are never explained.  Several of the characters mumble.  And the entire series is filmed like Kill Bill rather than Inglorious Basterds.  If you haven’t watched Kill Bill, it’s a revenge flick told as a graphic novel or comic book story.

But probably what’s most offensive are some of the truly unnecessary shots like the naked old woman in the shower and the Nazi dangling peanuts over a five year old child who is allergic to peanuts.  Really?  In fact the series opens with a Nazi being outed at a pool party at his home.  He immediately pulls a gun and shoots his entire family, including his children, as well as all of the guests and witnesses.

Casting was particularly awful.  Logan Lerman and Al Pacino were well cast, but the black female detective investigating the naked old woman who was gassed in her shower was bad in Grey’s Anatomy where she starred for three years and is even worse here as were several of the other cast members.

The plot is this:  A young Jewish man lives with his grandmother, a Nazi concentration camp survivor.  She’s murdered one evening and he sees the whole thing but does nothing to stop her killer.  He tries saving her but she dies.  Then he discovers she was part of a Nazi hunting group led by Meyer Offerman.  There are several things wrong with this.  First, Meyer is extremely wealthy and the kid and his grandmother were very poor.  Why didn’t Meyer help them survive?  Why didn’t he give them money?  He easily couldn’t had them live with him in his mansion.  Second, Meyer is modeled after Simon Wiesenthal, who is practically the exact opposite of Meyer.  Simon always chose war criminals being brought to court rather than vigilante justice and he only sought that because he wanted to see the victims heal and see justice done on a public venue.  Killing them in their toy shops and in the shower is the opposite of what he would want.  Third, at the end of episode 1, Meyer shows the kid the seven Nazis his group has killed already, all within the last month.  A moment later we hear the FBI talking about how “coincidental” it is for seven Jewish people about the same age and who immigrated to the U.S. at the same time being murdered all in one month.  No one is that stupid.

2 out of 10 stars.  I couldn’t recommend this series.  It’s tasteless and offensive.