When Logan Lerman was offered the lead in “Hunters,” he did what all actors do: He cast about for inspiration.

For portions, he had only to look inward. Like him, his character Jonah Heidelbaum was Jewish, allowing Lerman to draw from experience both personal and inherited. As for the fact that Jonah also helps hunt down and kill Nazi fugitives trying to start a Fourth Reich in America … well, the character’s motivation was easy to understand.

Still, other aspects were harder to pin down — for one thing, Jonah was from the mean streets of ’70s Brooklyn and Lerman, 28, grew up in Los Angeles. So the actor looked to gritty New York movies from the period — specifically Al Pacino’s work in films like “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon.”

“I was looking at ‘Panic in Needle Park,’ I was looking at all these roles that he did,” Lerman recalled. He sent photos to the pilot’s director, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, the first of which was a brooding image of a young Pacino.