HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (Jason Eisener). See listing. Rating: NNN
Expanded from a fake trailer that screened in front of Grindhouse in its Canadian run, Hobo With A Shotgun is a lurid, gruesome, violent revenge thriller in the mode of Lloyd Kaufman’s cheesetastic 80s epic The Toxic Avenger. But instead of a radioactive nerd cleaning up the streets with a mop, Rutger Hauer’s nameless derelict takes pump-action arms against the corrupt scumbags who’ve taken over the small town into which he’s had the misfortune to wander.
The movie’s all garish colour and spurting squibs, with the occasional burst of T&A titillation. As Mel Brooks once said, it rises below vulgarity, its pop-eyed villains gobbling drugs and torturing everyone who crosses their path. Seriously, the movie can’t go four minutes before someone starts throwing up or shedding body parts.
Which makes the sight of Hauer giving an actual performance all the more surprising. He’s created a three-dimensional character in the middle of a live-action cartoon, and there are moments when his considered portrayal comes close to derailing the movie’s heedless energy. And then someone sets a school bus full of children on fire, and everything’s all right again.
