Review: Hobo with a Shotgun

Delivering justice one shell at a time: Rutger Hauer.

Hobo with a Shotgun
Directed by: Jason Eisener
Starring: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Nick Bateman
Screening in: Melbourne International Film Festival

These days, trailers tend to contain moments that never seem to make it into the final film – alternate takes; ad-libbed dialogue; what have you. Low-budget exploitation cinema never had that luxury – the trailer, and even the title, was an unambiguous promise of what lay ahead.

So it is for Hobo with a Shotgun. Pretty much every moment in Canadian director Jason Eisener’s original, competition-winning fake trailer (which appeared on the Canadian DVD release of Grindhouse) has made it into the final film, shot for shot – albeit with even more gore. Indeed, it’s basically a collection of ultra-violent setpieces strung together on a plot of enjoyable preposterousness. And you can tell it’s made by a Canadian, because one character kicks people to death wearing ice skates.

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are responsible for the ‘grindhouse’ genre’s revival with their 2007 double bill, Death Proof and Planet Terror. Last year, Rodriguez expanded his fake trailer, Machete, into a very entertaining full-length film, while Tarantino was an enthusiastic talking head in Mark Hartley’s 2008 Ozsploitation documentary, Not Quite Hollywood.

While exploitation cinema is largely associated with the ’70s, Hobo with a Shotgun has more of an ’80s feel, from its over-saturated colours to its sinister synth soundtrack and urban-decay production design, which I associate with films such as Escape From New York, The Terminator and RoboCop. The villain’s two sons Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman) even look like escapees from Less Than Zero with their letterman jackets, slicked hair and Ray-Bans.

Ivan (Nick Bateman) and Slick (Gregory Smith) torture their own uncle, Logan (Robb Wells). "He always gave really shitty Christmas presents."

As the unnamed protagonist, Rutger Hauer is suitably grizzled and gravel-voiced, but nonetheless has a certain dignity that transcends the general absurdity, even when he is reciting a ridiculous soliloquy about bears. This will sound silly, but he reminded me a lot of Anthony Hopkins.

He rides a freight train into Hopetown (aka “Scumtown” or “Fucktown”), where crime runs rampant and a sleazy kingpin named Drake (Brian Downey) stages arbitrary public executions, egged on by Slick and Ivan. When the Hobo steps in chivalrously to protect hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Abby (Molly Dunsworth) and gets carved up for his pains, his outrage at the town’s corruption grows… until he goes to a pawn shop to buy a lawnmower, but fatefully chooses a shotgun instead.

Eisener’s feature definitely lives up to the verve of his original premise. Its lighting and camera angles are lurid, its violence extreme and spectacular, and its dialogue unbelievably, gleefully corny (“I’m gonna wash this blood off with your blood!”; “She’s so hot I’d eat the peanuts out of her shit”; “Please don’t shoot my dick off – I’m young, I’ve got too much fucking left to do!”).

Its moral outrage is as just as cartoonish. Paedophiles, corrupt cops, robbers, brutal pimps, human traffickers – all are gunned down with splatterrific impunity. ‘Drugs’ are represented by piles of white powder in which characters burrow their entire faces, Tony Montana-style. There’s even a meta-exploitative Bumfights-esque filmmaker (who shoots on VHS, natch).

Unlike the camp Machete and 2009′s Black Dynamite (which parodied blaxploitation films), Hobo with a Shotgun is almost too immersed in its genre to be a spoof, leaving me reacting with a mixture of horrified flinching and disbelieving laughter. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s great at what it does. Perfect viewing from the saggy vinyl seats of Melbourne’s dilapidated Greater Union cinema.

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