We had high hopes for this one. After Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino brought us several little bundles of joy like Grindhouse, Inglourious Basterds and Machete, it appeared that the glorious genre of exploitation moviemaking that had once graced cinemas back in the ‘70s and ‘80s was about to revisit theaters once more in an all-new and vastly-improved fashion. Indeed, following the release of Piranha 3D, we thought for sure that a new era was upon us.
In a way, we were right: there is a new era of exploitation filmmaking upon us. Unfortunately, it appears as if it is being helmed entirely by newbies and amateurs that don’t quite seem to know when enough is enough. Following my extreme disappointment over Drive Angry, I felt that it couldn’t get any worse. That all changed once I witnessed Hobo With A Shotgun. Well, sort of. It does have its moments. Only a few, though.
Plot? Well, I think the title should give you some inkling as to what Hobo With A Shotgun is about. Rutger Hauer takes center stage here as a drifter who winds up in a corrupt, lawless town overrun by violence and decadence (and to think it’s not from the politicians!). Soon, he goes all vigilante-like: gunning down the many villains the community has to offer in an attempt to clean up the human waste that has taken over. And that is pretty much it as far as the story goes, kids.
When Grindhouse was released in 2007, a contest was held abroad for would-be filmmakers to come up with their own faux trailers, much in the same vein of those which were present in the Rodriguez/Tarantino double-bill. Canada’s own Jason Eisener came up with Hobo With A Shotgun, which won the contest. As a result, Eisener’s phony preview was tacked on to some showings of Grindhouse during its Canadian theatrical run.
A few years later, Eisener unleashed a bigger-but-still-low-by-modern-filmmaking-standards-budgeted interpretation of his humorous homage to the unapologetic and over-exaggerated onscreen dares present in revenge genre classicks like They Call Her One Eye (complete with a similar title font). The result? Well, apart from giving Rutger Hauer a chance to star in a vehicle once again (he’s the only name in the whole feature, really), the joke of a homeless man mowing down bad guys with a pump-action weapon being extended to the point where it no longer becomes funny anymore, the disproportionate amount of violence and no-holds-barred shock value simply makes it unwatchable.
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Article comments
1 - A.A. Roi
As An interesting note, Hauer has previous worked with Brian Downey (who played the over the top villian Drake) in the 1997 LEXX movie 'Eating Pattern' (though their roles are somewhat reversed)