Hobo With A Shotgun

Synopsis: A hobo (Rutger Hauer) ambles into a town ruled by a vicious crime lord who is supported by corrupt police. Too decent to stand by and watch, he grabs a shotgun and starts killing every bad-ass in sight.

Your enjoyment of Hobo With A Shotgun will depend on a number of factors. First and foremost is whether you have any kind of nostalgia for the gleefully insane trash cinema that Lloyd Kaufman and his Troma studio were famous for back in the 70s and 80s. Films like The Toxic Avenger et. al., are clearly in the DNA of this film, with camp cartoonish villains, over-the-top violence, gore and enough nudges, winks and nods to make up an entire Monty Python routine. It might start with a suggestion of a social message, as the Hobo deals with an unscrupulous videographer taping the brawling and other degradations of the homeless, but it quickly and gleefully moves into WTF territory. never to look back. When you have demonic armoured assassins, complete with their own tentacled beast upping the ante on violence and gore, you know you left normal a long time ago, probably sometime just before the film began.

As Eisener’s film is an homage to trash cinema, it’s filmed in the same hokey style, full of wide angle closeups and cheap lighting. But behind the slyly sloppy construction there’s a brain at work playing with this Frankenstein’s monster of genre tropes, and it all comes together beautifully. Plenty of people will see this as puerile and inane ultra-violence, rather than comic gold, but those are the same people who thought the Dogme rules of chastity were something more than a snarky way to manipulate the pretensions of film snobs and turn budget limitations into marketing gold.

Hobo With A Shotgun is not high art, but it is great fun. And importantly, Rutger Hauer isn’t slumming in this role, he gives it his all and turns in a smart and accomplished performance of an unhinged man beaten by life and pushed over the edge. His comic deadpanning is perfect, and he gets a lovely monologue that reminds us how well he can soliloquize. Crazed, silly and great fun, this is one for people who like it when the film laughs along with you.

 

 

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