Al Pacino as a ruthless Nazi hunter? Where can I watch?

Controversial and in some quarters divisive – and it must be said thoroughly entertaining – Hunters returns with a second and, it seems, final season of 10 episodes.

Al Pacino in Hunters

Controversial and in some quarters divisive – and it must be said thoroughly entertaining – Hunters returns with a second and, it seems, final season of 10 episodes. Produced by Oscar and Emmy winner Jordan Peele, known for his sometimes unusual, always singular approach to genre — and written by David Weil (Moonfall), who has a nice feel for the rhythm and stylistic vernacular of classic film noir — it’s bound to upset as many viewers as it entertains.

Conceived as a manhunt drama, the series echoes those stories that arose in the postwar period, when filmmakers attempted to come to terms with Nazi atrocities and jar the American conscience. There were movies such as The Pawnbroker, Marathon Man and The Boys from Brazil, as well as Stanley Kramer’s Judgement at Nuremberg.

But it wasn’t just films getting in on the act. Novels — and especially comic books — showed Nazi villains pursuing a Fourth Reich across the globe. Jewish artists began confidently bringing Holocaust stories to their readers involving superheroes like Batman and Captain America. “I wanted to create a series that had a Jewish superhero at its centre, and that’s a Jewish superhero with might and strength and power,” says Weil.

Another motivation for Weil were the true stories of Germans who arrived on American soil following the war, the most prominent and valued among them having worked either directly with Hitler or leading members of the Nazi Party, such as Heinrich Himmler and Herman Göring. “I was trying to find more subversive ways to, for example, indict the US government for bringing over thousands of German scientists, many of whom were Nazis, to the States, right?” he says.

Then there were the Nazi pursuers looking for vengeance, imposing vigilante justice, and the non-violent hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal involved in actions against hundreds of Nazis. (One of the big questions for Weil was whether it’s right to go the legal route, which Simon Wiesenthal did. “Or is it better to go and take justice into our own hands because the modes of government that rule over this litigation are inherently anti-Semitic or racist?”)

The series takes this notion of revenge and vengeance into the world of superhero movies. Weil’s inspiration is to some extent his memories as a child of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, relating stories of the Nazis. “With the survivor community getting smaller each year, I felt a real responsibility, a real birthright, to continue that story, to continue telling those truths, to continue talking about her in some way,” Weil says. “Hunters became that answer. It became, certainly, a love letter to her, to my grandmother. But it also became an ability to shed light on hidden crimes and hidden truths.”

The series came as the white supremacist movement in the US had retreated and regrouped following the Charlottesville march, when Neo-Nazis chanted “You will not displace us. Jews will not replace us”. But it was clear that an environment was being shaped politically. Swastikas had arrived and left their mark in blood.

Weil says that setting his series in the claustrophic 1970s felt like it was mirroring so much of 2020. “It almost felt like society was hanging on by just a thread. And I think, in many ways, it’s an allegorical tale of today. We’re living in a society where there is so much anti-semitism, so much racism and xenophobia, where it feels like we are living in a climate hate, in a society that, too, is hanging on just by a thread.”

Logan Lerman’s Jonah Heidelbaum is at the show’s centre, a comic book nerd desperate at the start to find the killer of his Holocaust survivor grandmother Ruth, and the man who becomes his mentor — the aged survivor turned Nazi hunter Myer Offerman. He’s played by Al Pacino in a rare visit to the small screen. Jonah joins Offerman’s group of dedicated vigilantes, astutely assembled by the devious older man, who work together to rid the US of hundreds of senior Nazi officials living undercover and determined to create a Fourth Reich.

They and their comrades begin to violently target those Nazis who have worked their way into American politics, a quest Offerman says involves not murder but “Mitzvah” – a commandment from God.

The action-primed group includes an Army veteran (Louis Ozawa Changchien), movie star Lonny Flash (Josh Radnor), two weapons experts (Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane), a lock picker (Tifanny Boone) and a British nun, Sister Harriet (Kate Mulvany) who has a way with murder. Then there is FBI Agent Millie Morris, played intensely by Jerrika Hinton, a rare African-American woman in the service in that era, who stands on the right side of the law but is not above bending the rules when it suits.

For some, there were concerns about the show’s intent — that it might be misconstrued, and that having a laugh at some incompetent, clownish Nazis might drive a barrier between the material and its audience. It was a discomfort echoed by the casting of Pacino over any number of competent, industrious Jewish actors, including some big names which, as the critic Lucy Mangan suggested, inspired “a fleeting sense of unease and a feeling that moral duties may not be being discharged as fully as they should.”

Some critics were concerned that the show might be far more effective at titillating and arousing Nazi sympathizers than it was at speaking to the Jewish community.

Others disagreed. “This is a ballsy, unnerving, entertaining, overreaching show, one likely to provoke and annoy in equal measure,” said the Hollywood Reporter. “It may require an almost Talmudic level of study to determine if Hunters is good or bad for the Jews, but I’m willing to participate.”

The first season ended with several dramatic cliffhangers.

Offerman is revealed as a Nazi called “the Wolf,” aka Wilhelm Zuchs, having killed the real Meyer Offerman, taking his identity after Soviet forces liberated Offerman’s concentration camp. He is shot by Jonah, enraged by Offerman’s grand betrayal of trust. It’s also revealed that Hitler is in fact alive, along with his wife Eva Braun. The couple here had not died of suicide in 1945. They are hiding out in some sort of lavish compound in South America, calmly plotting a Fourth Reich; Eva Braun is revealed as The ­Colonel (Lena Olin).

The second season follows two interrelated timelines: one focused on the reintegrated Hunter’s pursuit of Hitler in 1979, and the other set in the past investigating Offerman’s life and his involvement in establishing his band of vigilantes. The first episode, written by Weil and directed by Phil Abraham, finds the gang of Hunters dispersed to various parts of the world, still coping with Offerman’s betrayal, though there are ­occasional murders of high-ranking Nazis still taking place.

We’re introduced to another hunter in Jennifer Jason’s Leigh’s Chava Apfelbaum, wandering through a small Austrian town during a local celebration in 1972. Seemingly demure and decorous she’s anything but, and it turns out she’s seeking information about Hitler’s getaway from Berlin through the mountains. She is, she says, a woman on business. Her trade is “quality control”, and she executes a shopkeeper whom it’s revealed was involved during the war in the ­murder of many Jews.

Then we are soon following Offerman, holding court, telling elaborate stories but watchful as someone appears to be following him. His true identity is known, it seems. A letter arrives at his office, saying “Hello Wilhelm.” The duplicitous Nazi starts to chase down those he fears, a man who never forgets a face. “Wolves can smell each other from miles away,” he says.

The other main storyline follows Agent Morris who is determined to take down a Pasadena priest she’s certain is a Nazi but on whose identity the courts disagree. Morris is increasingly certain the law is not the answer when it comes to revenge. Fully disillusioned she knows she ­cannot rely on the justice system and that there is a moral righteousness involved in operating outside it.

Pacino is at the centre of this first episode and he is terrific in the role, too. His is a rich, florid performance delivered in those distinctive raspy vocal pulses, often skilfully finding moments of levity to enliven a scene. He understands Weil’s pulpy approach to storytelling implicitly and plays to it astutely, with a subtle sense of villainy and an undertone of irony.

Hunters is directed with some stylistic flamboyance by Abraham, who maintains the look of the first series, the tonal shifts, the juxtaposition of styles and the kinetic camera choreography. Weil says the approach of the show is “about taking stereotypes and exploding them” but this first episode works as a tightly constructed thriller with only occasional pulp elements.

Hunters streaming on Prime Video.