Hunters (Pacino Nazi Hunter Series)

[Malcy]

This came out on Amazon Prime today. Watched the first episode and was impressed. Looks good, great score and gruesome violence. Set in 1977 and inspired by true events. Will probably binge the 10 ep's today and tomorrow.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=A5U4OTJKBko

[Puce Moment]

I feel pretty impatient with the new caffeinated old queen shouty Pacino - and he appears to be doing plenty of that in the trailer. But I will deffo give the pilot a spin.

[Malcy]

Halfway through this now. Its really good and not what I expected it to be. Can tell a horrific tale from the holocaust one moment and switch to something funny as fuck the next. I'm really intrigued as to what's happening and hoping it's not a one off series.

Bonus points too for having the unexpected scene of

Spoiler alert

Nazis walking in on two men shagging while roleplaying as Kirk & Spock and featuring the line "Fuck me in my photon torpedo bay"

[close]

.

[BritishHobo]

Not convinced by this so far. Two episodes in. In it mainly for Ted Mosby at this point.

[Lord Mandrake]

I watched one episode and it almost made me puke it is that puerile and wrong headed. I'd recommend Damien Lewis book on the real Nazi hunters instead. Some things really dont need embellishment for entertainment's sake.

[Puce Moment]

Ugh, I hate the tone of this. I guess I just want misery, tough looks, survivor guilt, squalid deaths and more misery. This has late-stage QT all over it.

[Lord Mandrake]

I think comparison to QT is very generous, at the very least Tarantino can maintain a consistent tone and period setting.. 'Booty call' in the seventies? The Englishwoman calling everyone 'twats'. It's so dumb. Investigating the murder of a German rocket scientist by gas in a shower.. Hmmm what possibly could be the motivation here?

The most egregious shite though is the fantastical holocaust 'tales'. It takes a very perverse pleasure in showing us these horrific vignettes which as far as I can tell are pure fiction and artistic licence granted - are just grossly misjudged and clumsily handled.

[bgmnts]

Ugh, I hate the tone of this. I guess I just want misery, tough looks, survivor guilt, squalid deaths and more misery. This has late-stage QT all over it.

First read that as Question Time and was thoroughly confused/intrigued.

[Malcy]

I think comparison to QT is very generous, at the very least Tarantino can maintain a consistent tone and period setting.. 'Booty call' in the seventies? The Englishwoman calling everyone 'twats'. It's so dumb.

The politician guy said 'Go hard or go home' at one point which really stood out. Thought that was a relatively recent pain in the arse 'yoof speak' thing.

Saul Rubinek is great in it. He usually is anyway. His daughter in this is played by his real life daughter as well.

[Puce Moment]

The most egregious shite though is the fantastical holocaust 'tales'. It takes a very perverse pleasure in showing us these horrific vignettes which as far as I can tell are pure fiction and artistic licence granted - are just grossly misjudged and clumsily handled.

It doesn't help that I watched Son of Saul this week which is a meticulously detailed account of the sonderkommando in Auschwitz, whilst also presenting a completely fictional story. I know they are not going for gritty realism, but the those Nazeee vignettes are fucking horribly salacious. The scene of jews cleaning up blood and vomit in the gas chamber in Son of Saul had far more effect on me than any of these nonsense scenes that feel they are from some shitty 70s exploitation film.

[bgmnts]

The most egregious shite though is the fantastical holocaust 'tales'. It takes a very perverse pleasure in showing us these horrific vignettes which as far as I can tell are pure fiction and artistic licence granted - are just grossly misjudged and clumsily handled.

Not alone:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-51606389

[BritishHobo]

Yeah the made-up Holocaust horrors make this really queasy and egregious. Inglorious Bastards is one thing, but bringinh that comic-book madness into actual concentration camp scenes is too much. Given all the horrific atrocities hat really were committed, and given the absolute wealth of material available on the Holocaust, do we really need a show to invent new ones?

If it wasn't for seeing Josh Radnor's name in the credits and being intrigued about what he was up to in something like this, I don't think I'd have bothered past the pre-credits thing, which was just that bit out of Marathon Man but with a Coen brothers twist (in fact it was straight out of season one of Fargo). The whole thing feels very Tarantino/Coen-inspired but just aimed slightly too off. I see the motivation and appeal to be fair, especially in these fucked up times; an unashamed comic-book bloodbath revelling in reminding the world that the Nazis were unambiguous cunts who deserve their heads to be stoved in. But it's not chimed with me and I don't think it will until Josh Radnor gets to be in every scene and speak all the dialogue.

[bgmnts]

I wonder how many tissues Toby Young used during this.

[Lord Mandrake]

Not alone:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-51606389

Wow, David Weil sounds like a total spanner. "Can we ever tell stories about the Holocaust that are not a documentary?" Shit, Jojo Rabbit I think won an oscar about a week ago not to mention countless films and books from The Producers onwards. Amazon also selling anti-semetic books until they got called out apparently.

[Puce Moment]

Even X-Men had a shitty, fictional Auschwitz story, but tonally it was passable. This, on the other hand.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

X-Men: Apocalypse had this awful scene in which Magneto returns to Auschwitz, just to destroy a few CGI barracks next to Olivia Munn in spandex.

I still haven't tried to watch the show, but there was already a fictional "human" chess game in Chelmno in Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort. Along with the sex scenes (which are even more poorly written than the ones in books by Stephen King), these pages were the worst part in the entire book, some made-up cruelty that pushes to the side and belittles the actual atrocities which happened there.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Hoo-aah-locaust!

[Malcy]

Last episode is a cracker. What an ending! Loved it.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I've watched the pilot and the first half of episode 2.

The pilot has huge stylistic problems, as director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon tries mostly to ape the serious approach of Manhunter, while the similarities are just that both shows take place in the seventies. Even in the first scene, you can see that everybody plays it straight, apart from Dylan Baker, who knows exactly what kind of material he's in, and gets into full Colin Sweeney mode (if you've seen The Good Wife). It gets better with the second episode, because of the montages, the fake trailers and 4th wall breaking.

Then, the scripts have their share of issues, including the direct reenactment, through flashback scenes and revenge murders, of torture inflicted on Jews, something that Tarantino had shied away from in Inglourious Basterds, for some good reason. The chess game is an incredibly misguided idea that still provides the show its main metaphor and its credits, but I'd also have issues with the shower scene from the pilot. The Hunters just reenact crimes the people were guilty of, but the very concept of gassing somebody with Zyklon B, just to give the Nazis a taste of their own medicine is completely fucked up and in poor taste.
I'm Jewish, I've grown with a few camp survivors and recreating a gas chamber just to get rid of one single person, while the rest of the world won't even know about it, feels just sick. Nazis loved sophistication and playing games, and anybody with a modicum of reason wouldn't go the same path to commit murder.

[Poobum]

This was two shows that had interesting performances and compelling parts crammed together to form something that is horrendously offensive. The Auschwitz scenes were like something I would have written when I was 14 and trying to be dark without the experience or emotional maturity to pull it off. I agree with mixing the reality of the Holocaust and operation paperclip with the cartoonish elements only serving to diminish the truth of it all.

Spoiler alert

The twist of Meyer being the Wolf was astoundingly stupid. It was as arse pull with no ground work added. The pseudo- Riefenstahl moment was supposed to hint at it, but it should have been a mis-direction. It also adds nothing on re-watch. It's not there in the performance because it simply doesn't fit. All those confrontations and moments of vengeance lose all their power because they're rendered illogical because it was all carried out and led by an evil sadist all along, so instead of a interesting look at the morality of revenge we just end up with the unbelievable actions of an absurdly unbelievable character. And also again linking it to reality; having Meyer played as an opposite to Wiesenthal would have been okay with a fictional and morally compromised holocaust survivor, but to then have it be he was Mengele all along just makes it disgusting and insulting. If you're going to have that discussion then it demands sincerity.

[close]

I also didn't like the Vietnam stuff, just the exploitation of one of the most famous images, like the show was turning into a best of atrocities and how we should all feel a sad. I mainly liked the characters, apart from the nun who was just an awful bloody fuck caricature. The Markowitz were the best because they were most coherent on the cost of what happened, and also theirs was a story that was all too believable. If the rest of the show followed that tone in would have been excellent, as it is I think it's a quite repellent and misjudged.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The Markowitz were also played by the two best actors in the cast, and they had somewhat everyman characters, which made them much more relatable than anybody else. And neither of them would probably be back in the apocalyptic event this show is renewed. A few of the outlandish characters, the sister with the afro or the Japanese-American, were the least developed ones in the bunch, and they were merely there to widen the plot, to connect the Holocaust to atrocities endured by other Americans, including, naturally Vietnam.

A true story. I actually watched the entire season. This was mostly a chore, as I thought repeatedly "No, they won't" and then "Fuck me, they did". At some point, I decided to save the last bunch for a very special occasion, last week, the eve of my colonoscopy. You see, in my apartment, the bathroom is accessed through the main room, which makes it possible to watch TV while seating on the loo. You just need to leave the door open. I don't usually do that, but I had to take two liters of laxative on the night before the procedure. So, I drank the first liter of the mixture and put on Hunters. After one hour and a half, it started to affect me, and it resulted in the most glorious harmony between onscreen content and bodily functions I could expect in such circumstances.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to watch the entire finale before going to bed, and I had to reserve the last string of reveals for the next day. As Poobum says, the Offerman reveal is both offensive and fucking stupid.

Spoiler alert

They also had ton of instances where one of the Hunters wasn't sure that so-and-so was a Nazi they had met, because of the plastic surgery, but then saw their eyes or another detail they couldn't forget after thirty years, and then they had no doubts any more. And we're supposed to believe that Ruth would have never noticed anything strange about Meyer, especially as the flashbacks in the camp showed zero similitudes between the two actors?
The real-life issue is that TV doesn't usually get actors like Pacino (or Kate Winslet or Anthony Hopkins...) for multiple seasons. They don't wan't to be tied for possibly three or four years, so they'll accept mini-series or one-season arcs, but nothing more, and they rarely change their minds before the episodes premiere. So, it was a given that Pacino wouldn't return for a possible second season. Which means the writers needed to kill the character in some memorable and meaningful way, rather than Poochie him at the last moment because negotiations for a second season appearance had failed. Here, the writers picked the worst possible exit, one that makes the character incoherent and batshit insane his entire life, while fooling everybody.

[close]

[Malcy]

Second series commissioned.