Entertainment Review: Hunters Season 2
The first season of Hunters (2020), set in the 1970s, was a vigilante romp about a group chasing down Nazis, who escaped after Germany lost World War II.
In Season 2, also created by David Weil, the disbanded group comes together, again when they find that Adolf Hitler (Udo Kier) is still alive and hiding out in South America with ‘The Colonel’ Eva Braun (Lena Olin). Tracing and bringing the biggest butcher of the Holocaust to justice before he can unleash the Fourth Reich, makes for an interesting and dramatic plot. Plus, any show starring Al Pacino is worth a look.
There are two timelines, one before Meyer Offerman (Pacino) tries to keep his real identity a secret, and forms the group of Nazi-hunters so that all those who can identify him as a former Nazi can be killed. Offerman was exposed as the elusive Wilhelm ‘The Wolf’ Zuchs in Season 1 and killed in the finale, so these sequences are just a way of keeping him on in the new season because he was the star attraction.
After that the group is scattered is doing their own thing. Jonah (Logan Lerman) is living in Paris with Clara (Emily Rudd), who does not know of his past, and wonders why he screams the name of Meyer in his nightmares. The murder of Jonah’s grandmother Ruth (Jeannie Berlin) was the catalyst for the formation of the group that comprised a nun Sister Harriet (Kate Mulvany), Holocaust survivor and demolitions expert Mindy Markowitz (Carol Kane), actor Lonny Flash (Josh Radnor), and counterfeiting expert Roxy Jones (Tiffany Boone). Then there was FBI agent Mille Morris (Jerrika Hinton), who wants to being Nazis to justice the legal way and war veteran Joe Mizushima (Louis Ozawa), brainwashed by the Nazis. Along with the earlier cohorts, a new character makes her entry—Chava Apfelbaum (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who adds spark to the proceedings.
With such a talented line up of actors, plus great production design, camerawork and music, the occasional messiness of the plot is acceptable. The style of the series is twisty-turny and over the top pulpy in Quentin Tarantino mode of flashy comedy-tinged violence. On the way, there’s a crazy Sound of Music homage thrown in. The first season was a surprise, award-winning success, at a time when there is a waning of interest in the WW-ll era, at least on television. So Hunters Season 2 has been declared to be the wrap up of the story. After the Fuhrer himself has been hunted, what’s left to do?
