HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

“Hobo With A Shotgun” originally started life as a faux trailer.  It was the winner of a competition that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino ran during their promotion of “Grindhouse”, which was to create a trailer for a non-existent film in the style of the grindhouse films of the 70’s and 80’s.  Jason Eisener won with his crazy and over-the-top “film”, “Hobo With A Shotgun”.  The best part of the prize was that when “Grindhouse” screened theatrically in Canada, the trailer for “Hobo With A Shotgun” was attached to it.  Audiences loved it and it soon became a favourite on youtube as well.  Fans demanded that it be made into a feature film, and that is exactly what they got.

“Hobo With A Shotgun” is about an unnamed hobo who, after riding the rail (unsure of his destination), ends up in a town named “Hopetown”.  However hope is something that this town offers very little of, as it is over-run by crime and criminals, and human life is considered a very cheap commodity.  At the beginning, although the hobo is sickened by what he sees, he tries to mind his own business and not get involved, but after being witness to a very public and graphic beheading, the hobo decides that he cannot sit by and do nothing.  It doesn’t take him long to work out that the town is run by the evil “Duke” and his two sons “Slick” and “Ivan”, and after witnessing Slick’s attempted rape of a prostitute, the hobo decides that his first act of rebellion is to make a “citizen’s arrest” of the sexual deviant.  However the police are as corrupt as everything else in the wretched town, and as soon as he hands over Slick to them, he is released and along with his brother, is given the opportunity to beat the hobo up.  The brothers continually beat him and carve the word “scum” on his chest, before he is thrown into a dumpster.  Left for dead, the hobo crawls around the town searching for the prostitute he had just saved.  She ends up returning the favour by looking after the hobo until he has healed, and once that happens he sets out to buy the lawnmower he had been saving for (in an attempt to start his own business and get out of this dead-end town).  Just as he is about to buy it, a group of armed thieves burst into the pawn store and take hostage a customer’s baby, threatening to kill it, if the owner doesn’t give them everything in his cash register.  This is the final straw for the hobo, who just snaps, picks up the shotgun which is for sale, hanging up next to him (which hilariously costs the exact amount the lawnmower was to have cost - $49.95) and blows away the gang.  He then declares war on the criminals of “Hopetown”, claiming he will take them down “one shell at a time”.

“Hobo With A Shotgun” is exactly what it sounds like, good, cheesy fun.  It is an incredibly violent film, and constantly pushes the boundaries of what it can get away with (a scene where Ivan and Slick set fire to a school bus full of kids, is just one example).  It is gloriously over-the-top, with the performances being no exception, but the film knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else.

As “big” as the film is, what grounds it in a reality is the performance of Rutger Hauer who plays the titular hobo.  He plays the role absolutely straight and (similar to Rainn Wilson’s performance in “Super”) he needs to for the film to work best.  His character anchors the film with both emotion and heart.  The casting of Hauer is quite a coup for Eisener and company because it has been a long time since we have seen him on the big screen (he will next be seen in Dario Argento’s version of “Dracula”) and he is fantastic. 

In the trailer version of “Hobo With A Shotgun”, the hobo was originally played by David Brunt and it was nice to see that Eisener found a small role for the actor here to play a dirty cop, especially because it had always been Brunt’s dream to play a cop.  As I mentioned, the rest of the cast are all hilariously over-the-top where they appear to shout their lines as opposed to deliver them in any sort of realistic fashion, but it works with the insanity of this crazy flick.

The script is full of silly one-liners that would be groan-inducing if ever said in the real world, but as a part of this deviant world portrayed here, the dialogue is often hilarious and works nicely.  A couple of my favourites are “I’m gonna wash this blood off with your blood”, and “I’m gonna sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight” and the ridiculous “When life gives you razor blades, you make a baseball bat……covered in razor blades!”

The highlight of “Hobo With A Shotgun” is the cinematography by Karim Hussain and the bold use of colours throughout.  Unlike films of today, films of the past seemed to experiment in the use of colour a whole lot more which led to some amazing results (Argento’s “Suspiria” and “Inferno” are prime examples that immediately spring to mind”).  There is nothing at all realistic about it, but it gives the film a distinctive “look”, which is certainly beneficial for a small film like “Hobo With A Shotgun” to make it stand out from the rest of the pack.  To be truthful, the constant colour work (full of bold primary colours) is probably over-used here and starts to become a little ineffective and repetitive, however I’m willing to look past this, just for the fact that the filmmakers are trying something a little different.

To help set the mood just right, the music and score is full of homages to the kinds of music heard in the grindhouse films of the period.  The film opens with a riff on the Ennio Morricone music that he would produce for Sergio Leone’s westerns.  It is certainly effective in this opening scene, with the hobo entering “Hopetown” and gives the moment an epic feel.  Later in the film, the score becomes more electronic in style, similar to what John Carpenter would use in his own films like “Escape From New York”.  It is all good stuff and adds to the picture dramatically.

One of the things that I was surprised about was the quality of the gore effects.  I do not know why but I was expecting them to be much cheesier than they were.  This is an incredibly violent film so there are plenty of chances for the make-up crew to show off their impressive skills, with beheadings, gunshot wounds, shotgun wounds, knife wounds and even a strange tentacled monster that appears to have wondered onto the wrong movie set entirely.

Overall, this is a silly but always entertaining (and violent) homage to the grindhouse films of the past.  Although the content is derivative, the film itself is an original (is that a contradiction of terms or what?!?) and as you must know by now, this is something that I support wholeheartedly as opposed to the crap sequels and remakes we are constantly spoon-fed these days.  The film is nothing but pure entertainment, there is no message here folks, and in that regard is succeeds.  I finally must make mention of the font used for the opening titles of “Hobo With A Shotgun” because it is the same font used for the American re-titling of the grindhouse classic “Thriller: A Cruel Picture”, which was changed to the awesome  title of “They Call Her One Eye”! 

3 Stars.