One thing to admire about exploitation movies is the directness of their titles. If you go to see a movie called “Hobo With a Shotgun,” you have a fair idea of what awaits.
“Hobo With a Shotgun,” however, isn’t quite a straight exploitation movie; it’s also a crazed, tongue-in-cheek reference to exploitation movies. Made to resemble a cheesy, straight-to-VHS title from approximately the mid-1980s (complete with vintage star Rutger Hauer), “Hobo” is a tribute, of sorts, to the kind of movie it imitates.
Like last year’s delirious “Machete,” this film began as a two-minute coming-attractions trailer in the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez “Grindhouse” project. At that point, Canadian director Jason Eisener did not expect to actually make a feature film called “Hobo With a Shotgun,” but on the other hand, how could he not follow up?
The nameless vagabond played by Rutger Hauer is first seen riding the rails into a town where the local population is terrorized by a psychopath called “the Drake” (Brian Downey). The Drake has two depraved sons, who are made to look like Tom Cruise in “Risky Business.”
The villains enact every evil deed imaginable, including a super-nasty early sequence involving a manhole cover. Like every exploitation movie, the idea is to rev up the audience’s sense of outrage, then allow our bashed-around hero to drink deep from the goblet of revenge.
“Hobo With a Shotgun” plays a knowing game with the viewer, because it expects us to be in on the joke: The action is so over the top, so garishly colored (literally: The film is awash in crazy oranges and greens), it can’t possibly be taken straight.
Eisener wants us to enjoy the cliches and conventions of the drive-in movie as much as he does, and he certainly knows his turf. While this is easy enough to do in a two-minute short (and the original trailer, made for something like 200 bucks, is indeed funny), it’s trickier to sustain it over an actual 85-minute story line.
But just when Eisener seems to be settling into a numbingly violent groove, he raises the possibility that there may be a supernatural element to all this madness (ah, what exactly are those robot-men doing to that octopuslike creature behind the door there?), and the film skips gleefully in a new, zany direction.
Tying all this together is the grizzled face of Rutger Hauer, who once threatened to be the next Marlon Brando (certainly in “Blade Runner”) but who got diverted into a curious career of low-budget items and TV shots.
Hauer gets the gag here, but there are moments where he summons up his powers and conveys real sorrow or rage, reminders of the actor’s tattered glory.
The audience for this film will be limited to grindhouse fans, but Hauer gives a reason to hang with it to the end.
“Hobo With a Shotgun” (21/2 stars)
A self-consciously over-the-top exploitation movie (of the mid-1980s, straight-to-VHS variety), featuring Rutger Hauer as a vagabond who takes action against a cartoonishly evil villain. This zany film, strictly for fans of such things, knows what it’s doing, and Hauer grounds it all with his still-potent charisma.
Rated: Not rated; probably R for violence, nudity, language
Showing: Varsity
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
