This review contains spoilers for season one, but not for season two.
Three years ago, Hunters was unleashed on Amazon Prime with great fanfare, and no doubt high hopes for the streaming service. Starring Al Pacino and Logan Lerman, this tale of a group of Nazi-hunters in 1977 got very mixed reviews. While intriguing, the first season was something of a mess. The tone switched from serious to irreverent to downright stupid, and it should have been clear from the outset that certain sequences were crass and were going to cause offence to many people. In short, the Holocaust is not a laughing matter or to be treated in a frivolous manner. But you knew that already, it’s just a shame the makers of the programme didn’t. There were calls from some for it not to be renewed for that very reason, but the programme makers said they wanted to make up to five seasons. Eighteen months after the first season dropped, Amazon announced that a second had been commissioned, and, a few months ago, they announced it would also be the last.
At some point in the last eighteen months, the first season was re-edited without announcement. Some of the more controversial sequences were cut out completely, as were some that relied on music that appeared to have rights issues. In other places, the original music was exchanged for something else. The quiet re-edit has drawn criticism from some fans on social media who are shouting “censorship”, but it’s fair to say that it makes the series better for the most part. It gives it a more even tone, and everything seems a little tighter in its pacing, and it removes some of the more self-indulgent fantasy elements. It was clear to anyone watching the re-edit that the second series was going to be a little more respectful in nature.
The second season dropped in January 2023, some three years after the first. All of the regulars return, some with bigger roles than others, and that includes Al Pacino, despite how the first season ends. Pacino’s involvement was one of the big selling points for Amazon first time around, but one has to commend how his return is made possible here without making a mockery of what has come before. There are also some new additions to the hunting team, including Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The second season is much more assured than the first, and it’s also far more focussed, concentrating almost completely on the hunt for Hitler, who is alive and well and living in South America. As the season starts, the hunters have disbanded, but the news about Hitler being alive quickly brings them back together, despite reservations from some of them. It moves at quite a pace, having just eight episodes instead of ten to tell its story, and one of those is given up entirely to a story within a story involving a completely different group of characters, and which doesn’t move the plot on at all (although it’s beautifully done). Yes, even in this somewhat superior season, Hunters seems intent on throwing a curveball. It’s still got as many four-letter words as a Tarantino film, and much of it filled with violence, although it is less gleeful about it this time around.
As with the first season, though, the series succeeds because of standout performances. Pacino is fine, but not outstanding. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s much heralded appearance is as annoying as hell, with a dodgy British accent, and it’s a tribute to the writers and the rest of actors that the performance doesn’t derail the whole thing. But this is very much Logan Lerman’s show now. His acting in the first season might have been somewhat low-key, but here he is much more assured and his performance has great flair, perhaps because he’s playing a grown man this time around instead of a wide-eyed teenager. He’s also credited with a producing role in season two. Carol Kane is also particularly good here (just as she was in the first season). There are times when she doesn’t have much to play with, but she has five minutes in the final episode that are spellbinding, remarkably moving, and remarkably real. I would be very surprised if a supporting actress Globe or Emmy nomination doesn’t come her way.
There is a sense here that the season is both too long and too short. The fairytale penultimate episode could be cut without detriment to the series, although it’s superbly done as a separate entity. Likewise, you could take out every single scene that Pacino is in, and it would make no difference to the main narrative arc whatsoever. That would probably leave a six episode final series instead of one that is eight episodes. At the same time, the finale seems too short, even at 66 minutes. Making that final episode feature-length would have helped it, I think.
This final season isn’t perfect, but it is a considerable improvement, and the final episode acts as a fitting – actually, an exceptional – finale, with some very moving moments. That hour or so is a great piece of television that raises some important questions that are pertinent to events happening in the world today (and arguments on Twitter that I was involved in just before watching it, as it happens), although it’s not particularly subtle about it. But the series was never about subtlety.
It will be interesting to see how Hunters will be viewed in years to come, if it’s remembered at all. There is still that feeling that it didn’t quite manage to achieve what it set out to do, and part of that is due to its own self-indulgences in the first set of episodes which probably resulted in a second and final season rather than a third, fourth, and so on – although I also admit that Covid delays might have had a part to play in that, too. What’s clear, though, is that the re-edit of the first season, and the clear focus of the second, makes it a worthwhile, if sometimes frustrating, watch.
Beyond Boundaries 