
Fancy some Tarantino-style pulp violence, with a ragtag bunch of misfits from the 1970s acting out their violent revenge fantasies on Third Reich remnant Nazis? Well, it seems out that neither Amazon Studios nor a large audience did, because the second season of Hunters, which premieres on Friday, will be its final.
Partly, you’d think, because the original was so tonally inconsistent. Creator David Weil’s urge to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust and then mete out extreme comic punishment was so out of character that he probably only got the green light for a return if he pledged to go completely meshuggeneh and seek down the biggest Nazi of them all. Yes, Adolf Hitler is alive and well in Season 2 of Hunters, and his trademark moustache is greying in South America.
The Hunters, which include Logan Lerman as the complex and traumatised Jonah, Kate Mulvany as a magnificently badass and entirely untrustworthy nun, and Jerrika Hinton as a renegade FBI agent, learn of The Fuhrer’s existence and rally the group to exact the most heinous vengeance conceivable.
‘We find Hitler,’ says Jonah, once mild-mannered, now hirsute and hanging out in European bordellos, ‘and everything we’ve done, everything we’ve become, will have been worth it.’
There are massive geographical markers, a knowing soundtrack (extracted eyes are mounted on a sculpture to a Yiddish rendition of Kelis’s Milkshake), and a remarkable dedication to costuming, period detail, and set pieces – including a brutally humorous Sound Of Music imitation.
It’s a lot of fun, and because the characters’ motivations were addressed in season one, there are significantly fewer awkward material shifts.
The only awkwardness stems from Al Pacino’s reappearance. Meyer Offerman, as the Hunter-in-Chief, is nothing short of spectacular. But, uh, he was killed in season one by a clunky plot twist. Inserting him here in flashback feels either contractual or opportunistic.
That pretty much sums up Hunters’ dilemma. There are some excellent performances – Jennifer Jason Leigh shines as a newcomer – and the plot is intriguing. But it never truly comes together to form a pleasing whole. That’s probably what Amazon believed as well.