Even my poster of “Close Encounters” was better to look at than “Hobo with a Shotgun.” The electrical outlet on my wall was better to look at and at least it exists for a logical reason.
“Hobo with a Shotgun” is a vile, stupid, repetitive and heartless throwback to the exploitation films of the grindhouse era, and I hated it with every bone in my body.
But to give the film it’s credit “Hobo” knows exactly what it wants to be and succeeds at doing just that. Still, I felt unclean and nasty sitting through it.
The title pretty much sums up the film‘s premise. Rutger Hauer plays the Hobo, and a shotgun plays the shotgun. The Hobo (he might have had an actual name in the movie, but I neither caught it nor do I care enough to look it up) rides a train into a new town to start a new life.
This new town is filled with ruthless thugs, murderers, child molesters and all kinds of shady folk. Fed up, The Hobo uses his new shotgun to become a vigilante and rid the town of all the scum.
He is joined by a hooker with a heart of gold because we know all hookers in movies have hearts of gold. The actress who played said hooker probably has a name, but I, yet again, don’t care enough to look it up.
Well, that’s all in terms of plot. The rest of the film is repetitive, annoying brutality. We see heads blown off, heads cut off, people stabbed, gutted, hanged, torched, etc.
Being the tough, brute, testosterone-driven male that I am, I find some glee in seeing violent carnage, but only in moderation.
After over an hour of seeing heartless and nasty violence, I grew tired and nauseated. There’s no plot, style or logic behind anything going on in this film.
When I watched the two bad guys walk onto a school bus full of children and set the entire children and bus on fire, and we see one of the kids burning to death, clawing at the window for help, I just finally gave up hope on the film.
Seeing a woman dance in a geyser of blood like it was a sprinkler on a hot summer day made me teeter on the edge, and then the scene with the charcoaled children yet finally just pushed me over it.
Such scenes could be used to great effect to show the menace of a villain. Dare I say they could also be seen as extremely dark humor. In the right context, such a scene could work.
I recall “The Dark Knight,” when The Joker was going to blow up a hospital and all of its patients and employees. What a heartless, deplorable action. But it worked because it showed The Joker’s menace.
I also recall “Rango,” when the title character carelessly handed a little kid a loaded gun, and the little kid was looking down the barrel of the gun with his hand on the trigger the whole time. It was terrible, but also hilarious, because there was context to take such depravity in.
It does not, however, work to show a group of children being burnt to death just to inspire incredulity from the audience. You can’t take the scene into context because the entire film rejects context or purpose. It’s pure nihilism.
Anything, and I do mean anything, can be done right in a movie if it’s done correctly. “Hobo” did nothing right but make me feel gross and immoral. It’s as if the film found the lowest road there was to take, and then built a subway track underneath it to ensure that there was a lower level to stoop to.
There seems to be a trend to bring back the exploitative grindhouse midnight films of the good old days. “Kill Bill,” “Saw,” “Drag Me to Hell,” “Machete,” “The Devil’s Rejects,” “The Human Cenitpede” and of course “Grindhouse” are just a few.
I’ve seen all of those films, and after everything I sat through in all of them, “Hobo with a Shotgun” was the one that transcended being a violent, nasty homage and ended up mining a territory I hope to never revisit again.
I’m not missing the point of “Hobo with a Shotgun.” I got the point of it alright, and that’s why I know that there are some people that really like this movie.
Criticizing the film is a wash. Calling the film a pointless, painful, disgusting experience would be the highest honor to anyone involved in “Hobo with a Shotgun,” so what do I have left to complain about? I fear that the movie’s flaws that I mentioned in this review will be the selling points for other moviegoers, bless their hearts.
I hate the movie for being what it is, but still, it succeeds at exactly what it wants to be and gives the viewers exactly what they’ll expect. It wants to be a nasty, mean, empty piece of garbage, and so it is.