A series based on a monster hunt is nothing new, so, first of all, the Amazon Prime Original Series Hunters is a cliched story of a band of people with diverse portfolios who team up to fight and hunt monsters, in this case Nazis. These are the Nazis soldiers and officers who inflicted unspeakable horrors to the Jew population during world war II – who, according to the series, have been invited to America by the government to prevent the soviets from getting their hands on them and using their expertise against America.

Some Jewish war survivors led by Al Pacino’s Meyer Offerman discover their existence and their ultimate evil conspiracy to establish a Fourth Reich, and then they group together to find and kill them
There is something about this series that is different. Now I am not talking about the core plot of Nazis living in the 1970s America and a team of Jews banding up together to hunt and kill them. It is the stylized story telling technique that sets this otherwise average series apart…at least for the first few episodes.
As I said, the only redeeming quality of this series is the stylized snippets which weren’t the part of the story, but were used as disjointed, unrelated clips to convey certain messages. Like the introduction of all the members in the team like a Quentin Tarantino movie intro.
And the best episode is the first one – especially with the chess game going on between Al Pacino’s Meyer and Logan Lerman’s Jonah and a gruesome human chess game being played in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Alas, that 90 minute first episode is the high point of the whole series and all the stylistic choices and the acting giants like Al Pacino couldn’t help the series from growing into an anticlimactic penultimate episode. The 10th episode, the season finale, is one hell of a concluding chapter – comparable to The return of the king in the number of plot threads it tied and concluded (leaving building blocks for a second season in each scene). And – building up to one final twist and one surprise reveal.
About the final twist all I can say is that there was ample amount of foreshadowing leading upto the twist, but by the time the 10th episode started, I had lost all interest in the storyline, so the twist was ill placed, to say the least.
About the final reveal – the ultimate set up for second season – the very last shot of the season finale: it was antithesis of creative imagination.
As far as I could understand, the show creator David Weil chose to cast Al Pacino in the role of Meyer Offerman, the old, World War II survivor Jew and the mastermind behind the team of Hunters and the Subject of this season’s final twist ONLY so they could use ‘academy award winner Al Pacino’ in the promotion for the series. There was no scope for a characteristic performance by Al Pacino in this aged drama with heavily accented dialogue.
Oh, and there is Josh Radnor here – you know – Ted from How I met your mother. His character, Lony Flash does not have much to do, in fact, he doesn’t even live upto his introduction as a master of disguise…which begs the question, what the hell is this character doing in this team!
Overall this is a series which had a solid start but lost its way among the heavy dialogue, the fine line between comedy and evil and in the unfulfilling climax preceding a long winded conclusion.
My verdict: 5 thumbs ups out of 10.
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