Hobo With A Shotgun
Gloriously blood-soaked grindhouse homage is one for the fans.
With grindhouse style cinema making a welcome comeback in the form of lovingly-crafted homages by fans, Hobo With A Shotgun is one of the most recent success stories. Coming about as a famous fake trailer to be entered into a competition (which it duly won), the video snowballed in popularity and demand from fans for a feature film became huge. The makers of the original short, led by director Jason Eisener, went to work and produced this love letter to the genre.
The synopsis is simple enough - a hobo rides into a city to find it overrun with crime and corruption. Unable to keep looking the other way, he eventually takes up a shotgun and begins to fight back, becoming a vigilante icon to the people of the doomed city. Blowing away corrupt cops, child molesters and pimps, he is soon put on a collision course with the local crime lord, The Drake, and his vicious sons Slick and Ivan.
Rutger Hauer is the Hobo, and clearly has fun in the role. One of the most respected screen actors around, his classy turn in the lead is pitched perfectly. World-weary, despondent and furious at the same time, the iconic leading man gets the audience onside immediately, and remains a compelling presence throughout the lean running time. Hauer clearly embraces the ideology of the filmmakers, and navigates the action scenes, one-liners and dramatic speeches with equal aplomb, a great fit to what Eisener has referred to as the "Champion-like" characters audiences love to sympathise with.
From the very first shot, the film will delight exploitation film fans, with gaudy technicolour visuals from cinematographer Karim Hussain, and a great musical track which sounds like a very deliberate homage to Cannibal Holocaust, drawing knowing grins from genre geeks. Even the text fonts of the opening credits feel like more like vintage Fulci than a 2011 effort. The dystopian world presented even feels old-school, like an '80s perception of the new millennium rather than being grounded in a particularly realistic environment. It really is a glorious attention to detail which stems from the filmmakers' clear love for all things exploitation.
It is this shared love for grindhouse roots which both makes Hobo a huge success and will slightly put the brakes on, however, as the gleefully blood-splattered violence will shock anyone not accustomed to the gruesome style of old-school exploitation. It really does pull no punches, with most scenes involving some kind of weapon being brought to bear on an unfortunate or five, with defenseless characters, including children, being no safer than anyone else from the red syrup-coated onslaught. It is bound to offend, become notorious, and be sought out by fans - just like its cinematic forefathers were.
This film embodies everything that is great about the new grindhouse movement, acknowledging what the fans want to see - there is a great little nod to the Youtube trailer with original actor David Brunt turning up in a cameo role. If, like many of us, Machete was one of your favorite films of last year, be sure to catch Hobo With A Shotgun - it does not disappoint.
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