In Amazon’s ‘Hunters’, Al Pacino Finds His Yiddishkeit

Al Pacino will track down Nazi’s in Amazon Prime’s “Hunters”. Image by Getty

By Irene Katz Connelly November 13, 2019

“This is not murder,” croons a be-whiskered, be-Yiddish-accented Al Pacino, glaring ominously at a cork-board tacked with photographs of men in totalitarian-chic uniforms. “This is mitzvah.”

It’s official: in Amazon Prime’s upcoming drama “Hunters”, Pacino will play the Nazi-killing Jewish grandfather you never knew you needed.

Slated for release in 2020, “Hunters” seems like a jazzed-up recreation of actual efforts to find and prosecute Nazis in the decades after World War II. But real-life Simon Wiesenthals would recognize almost nothing in the show’s invented premise: In 1977 New York, young Jonah Heidelbaum discovers that hundreds of Nazis have infiltrated the city after they brutally murder his Holocaust survivor grandmother. To halt the rise of a “Fourth Reich,” he joins a group of knife-wielding Nazi hunters led by Pacino – or, as the Schmooze shall know him forever more, Meyer Offerman.

An enviable lineup of Jewish and gentile luminaries have signed onto the project. It-man Jordan Peele is producing the series through his company Monkeypaw Productions, while Logan Lerman (veteran of the “Percy Jackson” fantasy franchise and secret crush of anyone who was a teenage dork in the mid-2000s) will play Jonah. Carol Kane of “Princess Bride” fame and Saul Rubinek, actor and son of Holocaust survivors, have signed on for smaller roles. Pacino himself is no stranger to portraying members of the tribe, having portrayed Shylock in the 2004 film adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice” and movie macher Marvin Schwarz in last year’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”.

“Hunters” promises a bit of post-Holocaust magical thinking. Yes, the Nazis really are coming for your grandmother — but not to worry! No Reich is a match for the walking incarnation of gangster cool. The show makes fighting bigotry look a lot more straightforward than it will ever be, but is the Schmooze too good to watch it? You’d better believe we’re doing ourselves a mitzvah and renewing our Amazon Prime.

“Hunters” will premiere in 2020. You can watch the trailer here:

Irene Katz Connelly is an intern at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected].

Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO