Written by: John Davies.
Starring: Rutger Hauer, Brian Downey, and Gregory Smith.
Studio: Rhombus Media, Whizbang Films Inc., and Yer Dead Productions.
Distributed by: Alliance Films and Magnet Releasing.
Country: United States, and Canada.
Year: 2011.
Budget: $3 Million.
The story behind the development of this movie is actually pretty inspiring, so I shall attempt to tell a brief version of it before getting into the review. Back in 2007, a competition was launched to promote the release of the Robert Rodriguez/ Quentin Tarantino double-feature Grindhouse. Entrants were tasked with creating their own fake grindhouse film trailers, with the winner given the opportunity to have their trailer screened in front of Grindhouse. The winner turned out to be Jason Eisener with his two-minute trailer, Hobo with a Shotgun.
Eisener was quickly approached by producers to make a feature length version of his trailer. He was not a professional film-maker, and he shot the trailer with his friends on a budget of $150, which according to him was spent mostly on “...videotape, pizza and smokes.” The film industry has always been the most exclusive of parties, and it’s good to see a regular guy get his name on the list.
As a person who has grown up on movies; who spent most of his pre-teen years enacting scenes from Predator, Commando and Aliens with G.I. Joe figurines, I won’t lie and say it wouldn’t be my ultimate dream job to be a movie director (or shit, even a screenplay writer). Accordingly, I’m somewhat enamoured with Hobo with a Shotgun. This is partly because Eisener is an underdog that managed to crack the industry, but also because Hobo with a Shotgun is a very daring film. There is also a lot to like about it. The whole philosophical aim of it seems to be to outdo every other grindhouse flick in terms of profanity, gore, sexuality, and general outrageousness.
Indeed, the people behind the dreadful final chapter of the Saw franchise, which I reviewed last week, could take a few notes from Eisener. These days, it’s not enough to only feature over-the-top violence for the sake of it. If you really want to tap into the irony of exploitation theatre, you have to deliver your violence in a creative way. Hobo with a Shotgun manages to accomplish this, leaving movies like Saw behind in the dust. One of the first notable sequences we see is a decapitation, followed by a bikini girl dancing sexily in the resulting blood fountain. It takes a special kind of mind to come up with something this sick. Whilst the grindhouse movies of the 70s and 80s were always subtle in their combination of sexuality and violence, Hobo with a Shotgun combines the two in a way that is satirically obvious. Needless to say, the scene is hard to stomach; but that is just the point. The film seems to be addressing the idea that grindhouse movies exist solely to deliver on our most primitive instincts.
The dialogue also abandons the nuance and subtlety found in other grindhouse movies. When the eponymous Hobo finally snaps and opens fire on a group of thieves, he yells “I’m going to sleep in your bloody carcases tonight!” A generic pun would have been enough to get the message across, but Hobo with a Shotgun abandons subtlety in order to deliver the ultimate grindhouse experience as an ironic commentary on the nature of exploitation theatre itself. With each card out so openly on the table (violence, offensive language, and sex), it’s possible to say that Hobo with a Shotgun is the perfect grindhouse movie. It leaves me to wonder where the genre can go from this point. I don’t think a sequel to this movie would be as good, because I don’t know if there is much left to be said.
Although it may seem like I’m blowing a lot of literary hot air into Hobo, it would be unfair to give it five stars, or even four. Like a bucket of KFC chicken that seems like a good idea at the time, it only takes a little bit of Hobo with a Shotgun to make you feel sick. By the time the cyborg ninjas roll around (I’m not joking), I had reached my Hobo with a Shotgun saturation point and was waiting for it to end. This is the nature of the grindhouse movie; they can only ever reach the level of ironic appreciation. The violence can be as creative and as brutal as it likes, but it won’t make up for that sense of awe that comes with the truly great films.
Rutger Hauer is great as the lead in the first twenty or so minutes, but with scene after scene of gratuitous violence taking the spotlight, he might as well have been an unknown. This movie is going to be a contentious one for me. On the one hand, I appreciate what it has to add to the exploitation canon, but on the other hand I suspect that the point was made well enough in the trailer. I’m sure I will view it again later and totally change my mind on the final star score, but for now its...
Three and a half stars:
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