Hobo with a Shotgun

My word, that Quentin Tarantino has a lot to answer for.  Thanks to his single-minded efforts to popularise the heretofore obscure grindhouse genre, these days any Tom, Dick or Harry with a digital camera or some grainy 35mm film stock thinks he can become the next, well, Quentin Tarantino.  But are we complaining?  Hell no!  The world needs more films like Hobo With a Shotgun, that is, more films shot for cheap that are unrelentingly frenetic, entertaining as hell and about as subtle as a ten car pile-up. 

The brainchild and feature length debut of fledgling Canadian auteur Jason Eisener, Hobo started its life as an entry in the fake trailers competition initiated by Robert Rodriguez and QT as part of their Grindhouse project.  It won, and after serving as a sort of thematic aperitif to Death Proof and Planet Terror at a number of screenings across Canada (as well as appearing part of the Grindhouse DVD box set) garnered sufficient interest to justify the production of a feature-length version.  The end result is a garish, gruesome and gleefully deranged exploitation homage that won’t disappoint fans of such similarly-themed retro fare as Machete and the superb Run! Bitch Run! 

Wearing its unashamedly DIY aesthetic on its tattered, grubby sleeve, the film stars Sin City’s Rutger Hauer as the eponymous  vagabond, who drifts into the fictional Hope Town in search of a new start.  Instead he finds a morass of violence, depravity, drugs and corruption, a place where life is cheap and terrorised citizens are at the mercy of a ruthless crime lord, Drake, and his two equally unpleasant sons.  Befriending a local prostitute after saving her from the murderous clutches of Drake’s progeny, our flinty-eyed hero determines to clean up the city the only way he knows how: one shotgun blast at a time. 

It’s all very silly, yet thanks to a near-perfect blend of pathos, cartoonish villains and rampant bloodshed also eminently watchable.  The eponymous Hobo is played to perfection by the grizzled Hauer, who seems to relish dispatching scuzzbuckets in a variety of inventive ways, and newcomer Molly Dunsworth also puts in an able performance as the hooker with a heart of gold.  Eisener stretches his meagre budget to the absolute limit and has produced a film that looks both period authentic yet pleasing to modern sensibilities - gaudy 70s-style technicolour never looked so good.  It won’t be everyone’s idea of fun, but those who like their genre flicks crude and bloody will undoubtedly find Hobo With a Shotgun a real blast. 

Special Features

‘More Blood, More Heart’ – The Making of Hobo With a Shotgun (44:00)

Production Blog (5:00)

Camera Test Footage (3:30)

Four Deleted Scenes

Trailer