‘Hunters’ draws varying opinions with Al Pacino's show seen as trauma mining by some and bingeworthy by others
Amazon's new original 'Hunters' starring Al Pacino, Logan Lerman, Jerrika Hinton, Lena Olin, Carol Kane, Saul Rubinek, Josh Radnor, Greg Austin, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa, Kate Mulvany, and Dylan Baker among others is about a Jewish group of individuals who are Hunters. They hunt the Nazis who are embedded in the US in the 1970s. The show premiered on February 21 and fans have shared their excitement about the same. From calling it "jewploitation", inappropriate and an attempt at trauma mining to referring to it as a brilliant piece, varying opinions have poured in on social media.
A fan who loved the show said, "#Hunters is dope so far and man I wanna live in a mansion with a shitload of books and Al Pacino. Is that too much to ask."
Another wrote, "Started watching this last night. Very intense but so good. Watch it. #Hunters."
One viewer pointed out how the show might not work at all at places but still manages to hook you in. He wrote, "As stylistically and morally dissonant as the 1970s, the decade that it's set in, #AmazonPrimeVideo's #Hunters series does #Holocaust revenge action with a trash culture brazenness. It won't work for some and sometimes doesn't work at all, but it's hard not to #binge."
One fan wrote about the show, "#Hunters@PrimeVideoIN @huntersonprime Fascism is one 'righteous' revenge away from all of us. Left, Right, Centrist, we can all turn into killers. That's what we've done for centuries. Can we see any better? Or, will history just repeat itself, as it always does."
One fan who did not like the premise of the show wrote, "#Hunters Who thought 'Nazis hide among us in America and murder Jewish survivors who thought they were safe' was a good idea for a show intended(?) to empower Jews? Why mythologize them into boogeymen for us to fear more? Yeah, I’m still on about this."
The fan goes on to dissect the first scene and write, "Having a Nazi, in extreme closeup, give a nasty detailed ‘we will always kill you’ speech to a Jewish character (and to the camera, therefore to the viewer) and then having him aim a gun at her/us and fire… in the opening scene?"
However, many of the fans who did like the show pointed out that it was this scene that had hooked them into the show in the first place. The extreme violence, that had fans compare the show to Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds', could be seen as a trigger for survivors and their families; and it could also be seen as a representation of the reality for Jews who were imprisoned.
So the fans' response to the show has fallen in between this spectrum.