And so the movie announces its brash formula. A scantily clad women bathes in the subsequent explosion of blood. Within minutes, he witnesses the antics of local mob boss The Drake (Brian Downey), who happily yanks off his brother’s head while leaving the body dangling inside a manhole. Hopping off a train from nowhere, the hobo finds himself in the insanely corrupt Hope Town (renamed “Scum Town: by its destructive inhabitants). Shot on the cheap, the movie is nonetheless beautifully photographed by Karim Hussain with a high-contrast, grainy style that reflects the tattered world where Hauer’s anonymous hobo resides.
With an amusing eighties synth score and nary a smartphone in sight, “Hobo” wouldn’t have looked out of place at the dirtiest Times Square venue 30 years ago. But rather than expanding on the motifs of grindhouse cinema with deeper aims, as Tarantino might, Eisner inhabits the genre. The full-length “Hobo” returns to those sensibilities. Now and Then: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmasīest Movies Never Made: 35 Lost Projects from Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and MoreĪ History of Unsimulated Sex Scenes in Cannes Films, from 'Mektoub' to 'Antichrist' WATCH: Tilda Swinton Narrates 'Dreams Rewired,' a Hypnotic Vision of Technological Revolution The “Hobo” trailer not only won the contest but also wound up attached to “Grindhouse” for its Canadian release, thoroughly integrating this gloriously one-note premise into Tarantino and Rodriguez’s deranged universe of homage. The movie’s premise was initially outlined in a fake trailer concocted for a 2007 contest to promote the release of “Grindhouse,” the nostalgia-laden double-bill concocted by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, which included a few mock trailers of its own in between the features. Loaded to the gills with thrill-inducing mayhem, “Hobo with a Shotgun” feels almost tribal in its commitment to violence.Īnd that’s at least partially a result of its origin story. Director Jason Eisner’s first feature demonstrates a serious investment in cheap entertainment.
#HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN PLUS#
“Hobo” has both, plus ample doses of exagerrated gore, a faded eighties action star, and the giddy, unfocused energy of an ADD-riddled Saturday morning cartoon. Griffith allegedly deemed a girl and a gun as the minimum requirements for any engrossing movie formula. This will leave most viewers bored and uneasy, especially in scenes like the burning alive of a busful of young children.The selling point of “Hobo with a Shotgun” is its primal appeal. Eisener and Rob Cotterill), plays the mayhem very straight, with only glimmers of satiric intent: the slightly too jokey dialogue the strong resemblance of one vicious character to the “Risky Business”-era Tom Cruise. Eisener, who appears to be determined not to condescend to his ultrapulpy material (John Davies’s screenplay is based on a story by Mr. Karim Hussain’s cinematography has an artisanal graininess the opening sequence of the carefree hobo riding a freight is actually quite lovely, like something lifted from a Hal Ashby film. Death and mutilation arrive by manhole cover, flamethrower and topless women wielding baseball bats, in addition to the titular shotgun. Like “Machete,” Jason Eisener’s “Hobo” is an expansion of one of the fake trailers embedded in “Grindhouse.” (It appeared in the Canadian release.) Its nameless hero dreams of trading in his shopping cart for a used lawn mower and doing a little landscaping, but his conscience - and his fatherly affection for a golden-hearted hooker (Molly Dunsworth) - forces him into battle with the enthusiastically homicidal family that runs the town.
Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse.” Does that make it a better movie, or even a tolerable one? Only for those with a truly bottomless appetite for gore and fan-boy humor. “Hobo With a Shotgun,” starring Rutger Hauer as a homeless Canadian vigilante who wishes we could all just mow a lawn, is a more honest, less self-conscious re-creation of a 1970s-’80s exploitation film than Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” or Mr.