We live in an ever-changing world, but there’s been one thing that has remained the same since February 24th, 1920: the only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi. 2020 seems to be the year for prominent streaming shows that feature the suffering of Jews in America at the hands of racists and Nazis. HBO’s The Plot Against America, an alternative history drama in which Charles Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt to become President in 1940, debuts in a couple weeks. Amazon Prime, however, beat HBO to the punch when they released Hunters on February 21, 2020 (almost 100 years to the day that the Nazi Party was founded).
Created by David Weil, Hunters follows a rag-tag group of people living in 1977’s New York City. Al Pacino plays Meyer Offerman, a Jewish, Batman-esque Holocaust survivor with a very large bank account. Offerman has assembled a crew consisting of an actor, some technicians, a locksmith, an assassin, and a few other experts to hunt down and destroy the Fourth Reich. Successor to the Third Reich, which ended in 1945 when the Nazi’s lost World War II, the Fourth Reich consists of Nazis who have secretly set up shop in prominent positions of power within America.
Logan Lerman, of Percy Jackson fame, plays the show’s lead, Jonah Heidelbaum. Jonah lives a simple life with his grandmother, who was also a Holocaust survivor. When Jonah witnesses the murder of his grandmother, he stumbles upon a mystery that eventually leads him to meet Meyer Offerman. Offerman apparently owes a life debt to Jonah’s late grandmother and offers to take care of the young man. Just like Chris O’Donnell found the Batcave in Batman Forever, Jonah discovers Offerman’s war room and begs to be part of the Nazi Hunters.
Simultaneously, Jerrika Hinton plays Millie Morris, an FBI agent who ends up connecting the dots between several seemingly unrelated, yet bizarre homicides of the elderly. When she uncovers the truth, that each victim had strong ties to Hitler’s Nazi regime, Agent Morris suspects that a group of vigilantes are taking the law into their own hands. It is not too long, however, before Agent Morris also finds that the Fourth Reich have their own assassins who will stop at nothing to prevent her from bringing their existence to light.
When this show was initially announced, especially with Jordan Peele attached as an executive producer, many believed it would end up being a drama deeply rooted in horror. The idea of Nazis hiding in America is absolutely terrifying, especially for Jews in 1977. Hunters, instead, is more of an action dramedy that works for the most part. The cast is fantastic, full of a bunch of great performers which each get their time to shine within the ten-episode season. While the trailers claimed the show is “inspired by true events,” most will know that this is just Hollywood speak for “fictional stories with a lick of true history.”
While the show’s crew is not exactly based on real people, America has had its share of real-life Nazi hunters over the decades. The Amazon series does, however, touch on the very true story of one of America’s darkest secrets: Operation Paperclip. The secret program, established in 1945, recruited over two thousand German scientists, many of which were active members of the Nazi Party, and gave them jobs in America. These scientists would play vital roles in assisting America during the Cold War as well as the Space Race. Though the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal later linked several of these scientists to war crimes and human experiments, no Paperclip scientist was ever found guilty of a crime in America. Many, in fact, received some of the most prestigious awards of the scientific community.
Amazon’s Hunters takes this horrendous piece of American history and runs with it. While the tone of the show is a bit uneven here and there, it never fails to entertain. While I did, at times, find myself wishing I was watching an actual documentary on Operation Paperclip, I was never bored with the fictional portrayal of these Nazi Hunters. In fact, the only real issue I had was with Logan Lerman’s Jonah. Jonah, who has lost everything, and has every right to be angry and vengeful, takes a long time to come around to the idea of killing Nazis.
There are few affiliations in history that have earned the international hatred and disdain that the Nazi Party has. While Hollywood has certainly given us a small handful of sympathetic Nazis, Rolf from The Sound of Music, and little Jojo Betzler from Jojo Rabbit for example, this show doesn’t waste any time trying to get you to shed a tear for these secret Nazis. As a viewer, I did find myself a little annoyed that Jonah couldn’t wrap his head around putting another Nazi in the ground. Thankfully, this wasn’t necessarily a season-long issue, and I was able to enjoy the bulk of the show.
The series has a few twists and turns up it’s sleeve that I won’t spoil. Al Pacino, as a righteous millionaire (maybe billionaire) with a score to settle, breathes a lot of life into the script. I loved his performance, and became really invested in his backstory. Each episode features one or two new Nazis, and showcases some of their atrocious activities during the war. While I’m not 100% positive as to the historical accuracy of some of these events, I didn’t feel that the show took any liberties further than it should have. The show, in my mind, is definitely worth a look.
RORSCHACH RATING:
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Victims and Villains is written and produced by Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey. Music by Yuriy Bespalov & Beggars. Hunters is property of Amazon Prime Video. We do not own nor claim any rights.
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