Hunters

HUNTERS - AMAZON

Hunters by Eric Kripke is Amazon’s next big hit, following on from Kripke’s over major successes Carnival Row and The Boys. Amazon has a large slate of original content that gets surprisingly little promotion. Once every 4 to 6 months they decide that one of the original streaming shows is worthy of a massive marketing blitz. With a large supporting cast, a big name at its centre, Jordan Peele's executive producer credit and despite a few bright moments this season is a disaster.

Starting off with a very sluggishly paced 90-minute premiere that feels like it takes forever to set up for very bare bones of its premise, Al Pacino eventually recruits Logan Lerman to join a team of Jewish Nazi hunters immediately following his grandmother’s death in late 70s New York  (aside from Pacino the main team of hunters aren't introduced till the very end). The pacing in the regular episodes (all but one comfortably hitting a full 60 minutes or longer) is better but has the opposite problem with far too much going on at any one time and severe tonal whiplash sometimes from one scene to the next. A series of scenes might focus on an FBI investigation led by Jerrika Hinton, a young American Nazi (Greg Austin) and his path of pulp violence, the team out on a mission to capture a target or a political thriller focusing on the highest-ranking Nazi in US government (Dylan Baker).  It also wants to be a serious Holocaust survival drama told in flashback which just doesn't sit well opposite the extended sequences of Nazi torture. 

Generally, the show isn't interested in grappling with the inherent moralism of its premise. If it was more tonally consistent than this would be fine but the fact it doesn't make the viewer question the moral dilemmas in the way the show does not. All of this results in an incredibly jarring tonal clash that is crying out for a more refined focus.

The one element that manages to stand out beyond the tonal whiplash is the cast, most of whom do a surprisingly solid job with some very thinly stretched characters. Pacino and Lerman are fine (with the former delivering the level of late-career performance expected of him outside of The Irishman and the latter desperate to prove that he can evolve beyond teen heartthrob into more mature material.) It's the team of hunters themselves (Saul Rubinek, Carol Kane, Josh Radnor, Kate Mulvany, Louis Ozawa, Tiffany Boone)  that deserve special mention and the moments where the season kind of works are all when the writing and performances are able to sell the team dynamic effectively.

The tone picks up a little bit more consistency and the plot become less scatter-brained in the final 4 episodes but mostly this season hasn't invested enough time in the individual plotlines for them to truly matter when they start coming together. This leads to a finale that seems insistent on having a pair of final twists one of which comes across as unbelievably stupid and another being the sort of thing one might expect from this show given how tonally all over the place it is but it was nevertheless disappointing to see the writers go there.

Hunters is very disappointing overall. A strong premise and some good performances can not cover up the insane tonal mishmash that is symptomatic of a season having so much that it wants to do rather than taking time to focus on the number of central themes and sticking to them.

HUNTERS is streaming exclusively on AMAZON PRIME