Hunters (2020)
| Television broadcast | |
|---|---|
| German title | Hunters |
| Original title | Hunters |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Year (s) | since 2020 |
| Production company |
Monkeypaw Productions , Big Indie Pictures, Sonar Entertainment |
| length |
Ep. 1: 90 minutes, Ep. 2-10: 60 minutes |
| Episodes | 10 in 1+ seasons |
| genre | Drama , fantasy , thriller , naziploitation |
| idea | David Weil |
| production | Kris Baucom , Jerry Copper |
| music | Cristobal Tapia de Veer |
| Initial release | February 21, 2020 on Prime Video |
First publication in German |
February 21, 2020 on Prime Video |
| occupation | |
Hunters is an American television series that began in 2020 and was also released in German. It tells a fictional story and is about the eponymous group who hunted down Nazis in the USA in the 1970s to prevent them from further infiltrating US society and to take revenge on them for their crimes. The series was criticized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, among others .
action
The series is set in New York City in 1977 and tells a fictional story. Nazis who evaded punishment for their crimes during World War II are in the United States infiltrating US institutions, including the US government, with the aim of building a "Fourth Reich." In addition, they commit numerous murders of Jewish citizens, including Jonah Heidelbaum's grandmother. Embittered by the murder, Jonah joins the so-called “Hunters”, a group led by Holocaust survivor Meyer Offerman. The group fights vengefully against the Nazis, letting them die in a way that reflects their offense. For example, the group murdered a former German chemist in a shower that had been converted into a gas chamber .
Cast and dubbing
main actor
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Jonah Heidelbaum | Logan Lerman | Patrick Keller |
| Millie Moris | Jerrika Hinton | Rubina Kuraoka |
| The Colonel | Lena Olin | Traudel Haas |
| Murray Markowitz | Saul Rubinek | Pierre Peters-Arnolds |
| Mindy Markowitz | Carol Kane | Heidrun Bartholomäus |
| Lonny Flash | Josh Radnor | Leonhard Mahlich |
| Travis corpse | Greg Austin | Konrad Bösherz |
| Roxy Jones | Tiffany Boone | Lara Trautmann |
| Joe Mizushima | Louis Ozawa Changchien | Alexander Doering |
| Sister Harriet | Kate Mulvany | Cathlen Gawlich |
| Biff Simpson | Dylan Baker | Bernd Vollbrecht |
| Meyer Offerman | Al Pacino | Frank Glaubrecht |
supporting cast
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Sherman "Cheeks" Johnson | Henry Hunter Hall | Julius Jellinek |
| Wilhelm Zuchs | Christian Oliver | |
| Tobias | Jonno Davies | |
| Maria de la Ruiz | Julissa Bermudez | |
| Katarina Loew | Megan Channell | |
| Ruth Heidelbaum | Jeannie Berlin | Isabella Grothe |
| Carol Lockhart | Ebony obsidian | Lea Kalbhenn |
| Meyer Offerman (young) | Zack Schor | |
| Ruth Heidelbaum (young) | Annie Hagg | Patrizia Carlucci |
Emergence
The filmmaker and Oscar winner Jordan Peele , known for the horror film Get Out , was instrumental in getting the series picked up by Amazon. The idea for the series came from the actor David Weil and was also inspired by the story of his grandmother, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps . According to his statement, his grandmother's stories would have seemed to him as a child like battles between good and evil, which are characteristic of comics and superhero stories. For this reason, the series refers to comics in several places. Weil named Steven Spielberg's feature film Munich as another source of inspiration for the series . In August 2020, the series was extended for a second season.
publication
All ten episodes were published on February 21, 2020 on Amazon's subscription video-on-demand service Prime Video , in Germany also as a German dubbed version.
Episode list
| No. | German title | Original title | Director | script |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | In the belly of the whale | In the Belly of the Whale | Alfonso Gomez-Rejon | David Weil |
| 2 | The mourning kaddish | The Mourner's Kaddish | Wayne Yip | David Weil |
| 3 | Apparitions | While Visions of Safta Danced in His Head | Wayne Yip | Nikki Toscano |
| 4th | Pious thieves | The Pious Thieves | Nelson McCormick | Mark Bianculli |
| 5 | At night all birds are black | At Night, All Birds are Black | Dennie Gordon | David J. Rosen |
| 6th | (Ruth 1:16) | (Ruth 1:16) | Millicent Shelton | Zakiyyah Alexander |
| 7th | Shalom, pork cheek | Shalom motherf *** er | Nelson McCormick | Eduardo Javier Canto , Ryan Maldonado |
| 8th | The Jewish question | The Jewish Question | Michael Uppendahl | David Weil, Charley Casler |
| 9 | The good old Nazi barbecue from '77 | The Great Ole Nazi Cookout of '77 | Nelson McCormick | Nikki Toscano |
| 10 | Eilu v'Eilu | Eilu v 'Eilu | Michael Uppendahl | David Weil |
reception
Interpretation and analysis
Critics compared the series to the feature film Inglourious Basterds . With her “brightly colored, burlesque-brutal rewriting of the story”, she works, for example Felicitas Kleiner in the film service , like the film and “like a teenage fantasy that reacts to the confrontation with the horrors of the Nazi era by creating it in the popular culture coordinate system. "
The series has been credited with social criticism with a view to failing to prosecute Nazi crimes and the United States' shared responsibility . According to Kleiner, this is expressed, for example, in a reminiscence of the Paperclip operation .
The Esquire magazine critic was convinced that the Simon Wiesenthal Center would serve as a model for the Nazi hunter group in the series, also because it was founded in 1977, in which the action takes place. In addition, the figure embodied by Pacino is probably inspired by Simon Wiesenthal .
criticism
The series received ambivalent reviews. This is also evident from the approval ratings of 63 and 55 percent, respectively, which the rating aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic calculated based on predominantly English-language reviews (as of March 7, 2020).
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial criticized the series via Twitter for being historically inaccurate, and referred to the flashback to the Auschwitz concentration camp , in which Jewish prisoners, used as living chess pieces , had to kill each other, which was also included in the opening credits . The scene is a "dangerous stupidity" and a "caricature" and would animate "future deniers". In a published response to the criticism, series creator David Weil replied that symbolic representations would help better understand the experiences of the Shoah and that the series was never intended to be documentary. Numerous other critics also criticized the series because of the chess game scene. The Jewish Week critic, for example, used the word “unacceptable” in this regard.
The journalist Jürgen Schmieder did not like in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the series wanted to be too many at the same time, including a revenge fantasy similar to Inglorious Basterds , a Nazi thriller like The Boys from Brazil and an action superhero series; however, it fails in this claim and is “nothing at all in the end”. Oliver Kaever in Spiegel came to a similar assessment , according to which the series was a “creative accident” and after the pilot episode it remained too unclear what it actually wanted. The reflection of the series on the legality of vigilante justice seems "as if glued on" and the series deals with the Holocaust in a “negligent” and succinct way. In contrast, the film service , which rated the series with three out of five possible stars, said that the series "kept the real horrors of the Holocaust present". In addition, with her multiethnic cast she commendably advocates diversity .
The journalist Mike Hale also expressed dissatisfaction in the New York Times . The series seems “underwritten” (in German: “underdeveloped”) and never achieves the “mixture of dramatic intensity, comic-like embellishment and cathartic action” that it seems to strive for. Your actors seemed underutilized with the exception of Greg Austin .
The critic of the Israeli daily Haaretz expressed himself in two minds: On the one hand, Hunters too often appear like an essay by a Jewish boy who had learned about the horrors of the extermination camps for the first time and who wanted to seek fictitious revenge using Jewish superheroes. On the other hand, the series deserves applause for drawing attention to the issues of white supremacy and anti-Semitism .
Critics of some British media expressed themselves positively. David Craig, for example, gave RadioTimes four out of five possible stars based on the pilot episode and emphasized that even the most drastic moments did not seem superfluous, but served the story and often later acquired unexpected significance. Hugh Montgomery gave the same rating in a review on the BBC website. He said that the series was moving and provocative and shows that fascism is never far away.
Web links
- Hunters in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Hunters in the German synchronous file
- ↑ a b Oliver Kaever: Batman and the "Fourth Reich" , in: Der Spiegel No. 9 of Feb. 22, 2020, p. 123
- ↑ Karl Gedlicka: Nazi-hunting with cartoon glasses: New Amazon's "Hunters" , in: The default retrieved from the Feb. 21, 2020, on March 6, 2020
- ↑ Gabe Friedman: Murder or mitzvah? Amazon's 'Hunters' grapples with the morality of Jews killing Nazis. , in: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Feb. 21, 2020, accessed March 7, 2020
- ↑ Denise Petski: 'Hunters' Renewed For Season 2 By Amazon. In: Deadline.com . August 3, 2020, accessed August 4, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Hunters. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 6, 2020 . (Short review)
- ↑ a b Hunters. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 6, 2020 . (Long review by Felicitas Kleiner)
- ↑ Tom Nicholson: Is Amazon's Al Pacino And Jordan Peele Drama 'Hunters' A True Story? , in: Esquire, Feb. 17, 2020, accessed March 7, 2020
- ↑ Hunters at Rotten Tomatoes , Hunters at Metacritic , accessed March 7, 2020
- ↑ Jordan Moreau: 'Hunters' Slammed by Auschwitz Memorial for 'Dangerous' Historical Inaccuracy , in: Variety from Feb. 23, 2020, accessed on March 6, 2020, original quotations in the same order: "dangerous foolishness", "caricature", " future deniers "
- ↑ Andrew Silow-Carroll: 'Hunters' Plays Unacceptable Games with the Truth , in: The Jewish Week of March 3, 2020, accessed on March 10, 2020
- ↑ Jürgen Schmieder : "The best form of revenge? Revenge!" , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of Feb. 27, 2020, accessed on March 6, 2020
- ↑ Mike Hale: Nazis, in Amazon's 'Hunters' , in: The New York Times , Feb. 19, 2020, original quote: "blend of dramatic intensity, comic-book embroidery and cathartic action"
- ↑ Adrian Hennigan: Amazon's 'Hunters' Is a Total Mess - but Here's Why You Should See It , in: Haaretz from Feb. 26, 2020, accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ David Craig: Hunters review: Al Pacino's new Amazon series takes itself seriously - and that's a good thing , in: RadioTimes of Feb. 19, 2020, accessed on March 7, 2020
- ↑ Hugh Montgomery: Nazi-killing series Hunters shows fascism is never far away , in: BBC on Feb. 21, 2020, accessed on March 7, 2020