Today's Review: Hobo With A Shotgun

Oh yes, it's another movie based off a trailer from Tarantio and Rodriguez's Grindhouse. This one was the winner of a contest Rodriguez held, but the fact that they eventually made it into a full length feature is awesome.

Rutger Hauer plays the titular Hobo. Upon jumping off a train into a new locale known locally as "Fucktown", he quickly realises it is a place of despair, ruled by a crazy, violent mob king and his sons. Innocent people are killed for sport, and violence and fear are pretty much all the townspeople know. Well, this hobo quickly decides he's had enough. After watching a few people get killed, he wanders into a pawn shop hoping to buy a lawnmower, but instead ends up wielding a shotgun to defend the shopkeeper and another customer from robbers. And so his new persona is born. He is a hobo, with a shotgun, and he will not stop until Fucktown's streets are clean again.

Hobo With A Shotgun is pretty much a perfect take on the exploitation movie. Guts and blood are thrown around in buckets. The lines rarely make any sense, but are obviously written with great care, with such gems as "Tell it to Mother Theresa while she's fingerbanging you in hell!" and "I'm gonna sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!". The plot is nonsensical, the characters are over the top and the acting is overly cheesy, but it's obvious that it was all engineered to be that way. To the casual observer it would fall into the "so bad it's good" range, but knowing that this was the intention helps you appreciate the effort that went into it.

The violence is the main aspect of the film. There are many dismemberments, murders of innocent people, and really quite shocking scenes. It's exploitation at its finest, designed to provoke an extreme reaction from the audience by being ridiculously violent and disturbing. It never lets up either. There may be the odd "character development" scene but it's not long before it descends into the mindless killing. The movie is also goddamn hilarious. The one liners come thick and fast, and there are a certain couple of characters introduced near the end for no apparent reason who are absolutely awesome.

Hobo With A Shotgun is the perfect modern day exploitation movie. If you liked Machete, this movie takes it up a notch, disposing with any unnecessary stuff such as a coherent plot, and replacing it with shit tons of violence and one liners. It's just a great movie.

My rating: 5/5