Anybody watching “The Hunters” on Amazon Prime with Al Pacino?
I’m up to episode 3 and not quite sure what to make of the show. It’s not bad. But it’s not good either. Not Pacino’s best work. His accent is slightly annoying. Like he didn’t quite take the time to get it right. The rest of the cast of characters haven’t quite jelled for me either. I understand they came together for a common goal of killing Nazis living in America, but why? What motivated them?
The comic book feel is slightly strange too. At any moment I expect to see Batman and Robin jump into the scene with, “BAM! POW! ZONK!” animation. Weird.
What is keeping me watching is the young blond Nazi psychopath, Travis Leich, played by Greg Austin. Thoroughly evil and creepy as hell: “…Peanut?” You want him to die horribly knowing exactly who kills him, but not too soon.
I just finished episode 2 and so far I’m liking it.
I understand the comic book feel, but I don’t mind it. It has a very Coen Brothers/Tarentino feel to it. I haven’t seen his other movies, but I did notice that Jordan Peele is a producer.
Before I started watching it, I noticed Josh Radnor was in it. I was happy to see that he’s doing something, disappointed to see that he basically reprised Ted Mosby. If that exact character showed up on HIMYM because Ted was either day dreaming about being cool or trying to act cool to impress someone, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Every time he speaks, all I can hear is “Cool Ted”.
So Episode 3 or 4… they don’t want to alert the Nazis by letting them know they opened safety box 630. But then they practically take out a billboard ad about it.
I watched the first episode last night, having been told by two people whose taste I trust that it was fantastic.
Hmm…it’s not for me, I guess. It’s not bad, exactly, but it is violent and unsubtle.
I’ll give it 1-2 more episodes to be sure how I feel; it’s not uncommon for me to dislike pilots only to warm up to a show later.
One thing I found clumsy about the show was the sense that they were trying to do a 70s vibe with the same finesse that “Stranger Things” did for the 1980s. But they failed, IME. It felt forced, like when the camera zoomed pointedly in - not once, but twice! - on a TV guide magazine with Farrah Fawcett on the cover, or the references to Son of Sam as a “sequence killer.” HEY EVERYBODY, IT’S THE 1970’S!!! Yeah, yeah, we get it. Stop shouting.
Well, it ended better than it began, IMO. Not much better, but better. Twist was completely unexpected and initially I groaned audibly. But then I grew to kind of appreciate it. Explained a lot about Mayer’s motives, as contrived and implausible as the entire premise of his survival was.
The last scene of the final episode… give me a fucking break.
I mean, it’s a comic book. What did I expect?:smack:
I know they’re taking some liberties on how actual events played out, but I didn’t think they were going to go quite that far off course. Part of me is holding out hope that, since they only said ‘ava’ and ‘adolf’, they’re just going to be pet names for each other.
I’m not a comic book reader, and I’m inferring from this statement that they really are the Hitlers. One thing about not reading comic books is that I often find myself behind the curve. In general, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s really only shows up in places like this where some people know what’s going to happen before others.
A good example is Walking Dead. And, yes, I know, it didn’t follow the source material religiously either, but some people were still more clued in than others. Hell, I didn’t even know it was a comic book until a season cliff hanger where we saw a woman walking with two zombies on chains and everyone yelled ‘Michonne!’.
Yeah, the last time I read a comic book was as a pre-teen in summer camp. I just took a wild guess that the show is based on a comic book from the way it’s filmed and edited. It seems to be the case but I just can’t be arsed to read past the first few sentences of the wiki article about it. Not sure how much of the next season will be worth watching. I do like the nun character, and the young sociopath is absolutely brilliantly played. Also, no small amount of vicarious satisfaction in watching them kill Nazis.
I’m two episodes in and count me a having mixed feelings about it. I didn’t know going in that it was based on a comic book, but the directing (frame compositions, cuts) and acting (very over the top) and story telling (one dimensional characters, lurid) led me to that conclusion early on.
I have a problem with Pacino’s performance in that he is basically doing “Jew-face”. Yes, I know it’s acting, etc etc, but how is it any different than a white actor doing black-face or yellow-face?
And I have a discomfort with portraying the very real atrocities of the Nazis against the Jews for comic book shock value. But that’s just me.
If you’re not a fan of the visual style, you don’t like the choice of lead actor, you don’t like the supporting characters and you feel that you already know how the season is going to end, I’d suggest you cut your losses and give up now. There’s not much reason to push through 8 more episodes of a show you don’t really seem to like.