Hunters Season 2: Alternate History Hitler

I just binged the eight-episode second and final season of Hunters on Amazon Prime Video.  I liked it a lot more than the first season, and I liked the first season a lot, with some reservations.  Indeed, though the first season was an intensely personal story set in all-too real world, the second season was even more personal and managed also to be about the real world, our current real world, in fact.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The first season ends with the revelation that Hitler and Eva Braun are alive and well and planning to take over the world from their secret compound in Argentina.  That revelation comes after the upending unmasking of Nazi-hunter Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino) as the German concentration monster Wilhelm Zuchs aka The Wolf.   The second season picks up the backstory of Offerman/Zucks but shows its mettle in the Hitler/Braun story, and how our band of Hunters finally brings them to justice.

It does such a good job of this, on so many levels, that I'd say it lifts Hunters into The Man in the High Castle TV series territory, and lands just slightly behind it. The relationship between Hitler and Braun -- their mutual contempt, with Braun thinking she's the logical leader of the Fourth Reich and Hitler telling her at some point that the most important accomplishment of her life will be that she married him -- is both surprising and convincing.  The battles of the Hunters and Nazis are exciting and unpredictable.

But the biggest strength of the second season, right up there with its achievement as alternate history, is the way it links its 1979 story by strong implication to the resurgence of Naziism and white supremacy that grips our country and our world today.  The January 6, 2021 attack on Congress, the shootings of New Mexico Democrats by a Republican who lost the 2022 election, reported just in the past few days, show how looming and dangerous fascism is in the United States right now.  Putin says his savage attacks on Ukraine are to root out Nazis but he and his military are the ones employing Nazi tactics in their atrocities and propaganda.  In the very last scene of Hunters, Jonah looks across a table at an outdoor cafe at someone who looks like Hitler.  We last saw Hitler locked up in a high security prison in Europe, so there's no reason to think the man at that table was Hitler.  But there's every reason to think that the imprisonment of the real Hitler has not put much of a dent in the would-be Hitlers at large in 1979 -- and even more so today.

If I had one quibble with this powerful story, it is that too many of the characters on both sides seem to be able to easily survive being hit and even riddled by bullets.  I could accept this happening once.  But even twice is too much, in terms of stretching credibility.

But there were also some masterpieces of scenes and episodes in this second season.  I thought the seventh episode, nearly a standalone story of a German couple who give shelter to several families of Jewish people, could easily have been an Oscar-winning movie in itself.  And the battle scenes throughout the narrative were as good as they get.

Inevitably, the question arises of how about another season?  I thought Amazon cancelled The Man in the High Castle a little too quickly after four seasons, and that's certainly the case for Hunters after two seasons and the crucial story it's been telling.  Given the precarious condition of the world in which we now live, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a continuation of the Hunters story in some format and venue before too long.

See also Hunters: Praise and Reservations

my interview of Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

poems about the Holocaust ... my review

my interview with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

an alternate history short story -- get it on Kindle, or read it free on Vocal

Your Honor 1.7: Cranston and Stuhlbarg Approaching Pacino and De Niro

Let me start off my review of Your Honor 1.7 by saying the scenes between Cranston and Stuhlbarg -- the Judge and the mobster -- were so good, they could have been between Pacino and De Niro.  Two outstanding actors acting their hearts and souls out in this one-of-a-kind drama, playing two fathers, one who wants at all costs to protect his son, the other wanting both revenge for the son who died and protection for the one who has just been arrested for murder.

The Judge again shows himself adept and quick-witted when the situation calls for it.  Why didn't you turn yourself in, Baxter asks the Judge.  I was going to, I was at the police station, the Judge replies, and then I saw you.  The best lies are the ones closest to the truth in these one-on-one situations, and the Judge was indeed in that police station, ready to bring in his son Adam.

I don't get Baxter's strategy in another scene, though,  Why not give Big Mo her $150,000 back?  Why say she has to eat it, and risk a war, right when he's trying to get his son Carlo out of justice's way, and get back to making the Judge pay?  He doesn't want to appear weak, I know, but he's not as smart as any of the lead mobsters in the Godfather or Goodfellas.

Adam, however, is as sharp as his father.   He doesn't believe the Judge's story.  He wisely has not told him that he and Fia are falling in love, and you know that's going to have a decisive role in how this brilliant series ends.  The Judge is a master strategist.  He managed to get Sarah off the Carlo case by feeding her single malts in the bar.  But he can't control everything, and it's still an open question of who will be left alive, who will be left out of prison, when this series concludes.

I'm very glad there are three more episodes.

See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday" ... Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link ... Your Honor 1.4: The Dinner ... Your Honor 1.5: The Vice Tightens ... Your Honor 1.6: Exquisite Chess Game

Hunters: Praise and Reservations

Hunters, due to its unusual mix of things I really liked and aspects I found annoying, is one of the strangest television series I've ever seen.   For that reason alone, it's unique,

What I really liked was of course Al Pacino's superb acting in the lead role in late 1970s America.  The rest of the acting was excellent, too, including Logan Lerman as Jonah.  The concentration camp scenes in 1940s Nazi Europe were of course not likeable, but as powerful as ever I've seen in a television series or a movie.  The depth of the Fourth Reich hatred of Jews in late 1970s America was well portrayed, which is to say, chilling and sobering to the core, even though it's not completely clear how much exaggeration, if any, is in that portrayal.

The series is billed as based on true events.  It is true that America welcomed Wernher von Braun and other Nazi scientists to the U. S. after the war, rather than see them fall into the hands of the Soviets.  It's also true that von Braun's genius in rocketry was at partly responsible for the U. S. beating the Soviets in the space race, and getting us to the Moon and back in 1969.  What's not clear at all in our history is whether von Braun had any connection to American neo-Nazis, and, indeed, to indicate that he did, as in Hunters, moves his true story into rank conspiracy theory.

And that gets to the parts I really didn't care for in Hunters.  In addition to playing fast and loose with life and death matters, Hunters deliberately almost frolics at times in a cartoonish ambience.  Faux commercials either promoting the Fourth Reich or telling the truth about some political matter are peppered into the episodes.  Although the action scenes are excellent, there's a bit of too much derring do and wise-cracking among the combatants.  The story works best when it tenderly presents the foibles of vulnerable human life, and worst when it verges into super heroism.

The plot is complex and, for the most part, very effective.  I'll leave it to you to decide if you liked the stunning revelation in last episode.  I didn't, particularly, and also think it didn't quite make sense.

Nonetheless, I'd rate Hunters as well worth your seeing.



just releasing:  Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time  - digital, CD, vinyl

The Irishman: "It's What It Is"

"It's what it is" was an oft-repeated phrase in this three-and-a-half movie about who killed Jimmy Hoffa, and how.  And what this movie by Martin Scorsese certainly is, is something extraordinary, in the story it tells, and in the way it was directed by Scorsese, and acted by Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and, for that matter, everyone else in the movie.

One big question is how true is the story Frank Sheeran tells us in the last days of his life.  Part of this story is how Sheeran killed Joey Gallo in 1972 in Umberto's Clam House in New York City.  Up until this movie, based on  Charles Brandt's 2004 book, I Heard You Paint Houses (which I haven't read), I had thought that four other gunmen (not Sheeran) had killed Gallo (see the Wikipedia entry on this). Since I wasn't there, I can't with certainty know who killed Gallo.  But if Sheeran did not kill Gallo, why should we believe that he killed Hoffa?

A somewhat lesser but still significant question is why Sheeran's daughter Peggy had such deep misgivings about her father, to the point of never talking to him again after Sheeran (presumably) killed Hoffa?  Why did she have those misgiving all those years?   Why her and not her sisters?  Based on the movie, the only answer I can think of is that Peggy had almost a sixth sense about her father, which is not very satisfying as even a component of such a momentous story.  (There was the scene of Sheeran crushing the hand of the man who pushed her in the grocery store - with Peggy looking on - but this doesn't seem sufficient for her life-long, growing abhorrence of her father.)

But there's an old saying to the effect of, though it may not be true, it's still a great story.  And that is manifestly the case for The Irishman.  And a lot of the story does make a perfect kind of sense.  Why did Russ (played by Pesci) talk Sheeran into killing Hoffa?  It was to protect both Sheeran and Russ, as Russ later explains to Sheeran.  If someone else had killed Hoffa, the mob would have been concerned, very concerned, that Sheeran might seek some vengeance.  As we heard early in the movie, being very concerned is a state that everyone takes very seriously.  With Sheeran pulling the trigger on Hoffa, the mob didn't have to be concerned about vengeance because, who could Sheeran take vengeance on, himself?

As for the acting, tour de force doesn't do justice to the three main players.  De Niro was absolutely masterful in voice and expression.  Pacino was the same - the way he says "phone" in his first conversation as Hoffa with Sheeran is just the right tone to establish Hoffa as a character in a world of his own.  And the same for Pacino's expression when Russ (Pesci) tells Hoffa that he may not be showing proper "appreciation".  Pesci delivers that line with a quiet strength and mob wisdom that typifies his character.  All three acted their characters over decades - the "de-aging" process enhanced this, but their acting brought the ages home.  My recommendation: all three actors should split the Oscar for best performance this year.  The supporting roles in the movie might be too short for supporting Oscars, but they were all memorable, ranging from Jesse Plemons as Hoffa's son Chuckie to Harvey Keitel as mobster Angelo Bruno.  (And shoutout to the inimitable Logan Crawford who plays a reporter.)

I have to also talk about the music.  I used to sing "In the Still of the Night" by The Five Satins with my doo-wop group in the late 50s/early 60s (I was just a kid), and it was great to hear that song at least three times in The Irishman.  The other music was right on key for the movie, too.

Scorsese is already lauded for Goodfellas and Casino, movies about the mob that were so good they come in just below The Godfather trilogy.  I'd put The Irishman just above those two, and I'm going to keep thinking about it.

I should also mention - it's one thing to see a movie on Netflix that would never be in a movie theater.  It's quite another to see a movie on Netflix, by one of the world's leading directors, with all-time great actors, that is playing in theaters in New York City right now.  The streaming revolution continues apace.

 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Listen to the Way Pacino (Hoffa) Says "Phone"

This has to be one of the best trailers I've ever seen - for Martin Scorsese's new movie, The Irishman, due out on Netflix and select theaters this Fall.  It stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pacino.  It's about Jimmy Hoffa.  How could you go wrong?

But it looks and sounds to be even better than that.  Listen to way Pacino, playing Hoffa, says "phone" (about 28 seconds in).   Pacino's voice and phrasing, the way he bends words just right, like daggers (usually softly) in your heart, has always been one of his strongest suits.  But this "phone" is something else.  Beyond just right.  Sheer acoustic genius.

And De Niro has been subject to a new "de-aging process".   That's something to see, too.  This trailer is like a real window to the past - except the real is the Hoffa story, and the fiction is someone De Niro's current age playing him in a 2019 movie.

Pesci also is in fine form and voice.   I could listen to these three guys all night.   If the movie is anything as good as the trailer, it'll be one for the ages.  Look for my review here in the Fall.

The Drop: A Lift

I saw The Drop last night - the Dennis Lehane movie (he wrote the screenplay, based on his short story, "Animal Rescue"), starring James Gandolfini in his final performance and Tom Hardy in what, by my lights, is probably the best performance of his career so far.

The plot is intricate, with lots of sharp, dangerous, fast and slow moving pieces, and it's all brought together beautifully in the end, with a twist that's stunning when it happens but perfectly plausible in retrospect - in other words, precisely the kind of surprise ending you would want.

Tom Hardy delivers of powerful performance as Bob, who seems well over his head in the lethal currents swirling all around him, but has a quiet strength and a heart, which we see applied to Nadia, the complicated love interest, and Rocco, an adorable puppy.  As a police detective remarks, you don't see Bob, even though he's right in front of you.  And Hardy's portrayal is as memorable as it gets, like a low key Pacino, if that makes any sense.

Gandolfini as Bob's cousin Marv was outstanding, making it all the sadder that this is his last performance. As he did in all his renditions of people in one way or another involved in criminal activity, Gandolfini managed to project a no-nonsense toughness combined with an appealing humanity.

All of this is played out against a tableau of a bar owned by the Russian mob, and used a "drop" place for its illegally gotten gains, and a psycho not connected to the mob who is thrown in for good and bad measure.  The pace and the dialogue are reminiscent of Tarantino at his best, and I found The Drop is one of the most appealing movies of this kind to come along in years.

a different kind of crime