HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (2011)

The poster is also better than the movie

This film's origin is more interesting than the film itself.  It's Canadian, it's the debut for director Jason Eisener, and it's the result of a promotional contest for the 2007 Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino debacle Grindhouse.  They invited budding filmmakers to submit fake trailers in the grindhouse spirit and the winner would be shown along with the movie's other fake trailers during select screenings in their home turf.  Since RR was able to turn his fake trailer for Machete into an actual film, and an entertaining one at that, it was only a matter of time before another trailer became a real film.  This one doesn't quite make the same smooth transition.  It worked better as a 2 1/2 minute trailer for the same reason that many trailers are better than the films they advertise: some ideas are great for a few minutes, not so great for 80+ minutes.

Rutger Hauer stars as the titular anti-hero, a man of no fixed address who rides into town on the rails and dreams of buying a lawn mower so he can get his life back together.  I sure hope most of the film's 3 million dollar budget was spent on Sir Rutger because he actually makes the Hobo a believable and sympathetic character even though he lives in an ugly, hyper-violent, hateful world.  He does good work with weird scenes like a monologue about a bear or another monologue about how much life sucks delivered to a room full of babies.

Did I say hyper-violent?  I meant something more than that, whatever the next order of magnitude is on violence scale.  When in doubt, the film doubles down on the violence.  People always talks about films like Reservoir Dogs being super violent, but since Tim Roth's injury is just a very messy shirt as far as the audience can see and since Michael Madsen's rampage is quick enough that you can avert your eyes, I never really considered that a very violent film.  I usually avert my eyes when people use hypodermic needles in films, so any film where somebody gets a shot is basically just as violent to me as Reservoir Dogs.  But this movie...

Did I say hyper-violent, super violent, and very violent?  Yeah it is really that violent.  It's only about ten minutes into the movie before somebody gets a barbwire noose induced decapitation and a fur coat and bikini clad floozy starts writhing seductively in the geyser of blood erupting from the headless corpse.  Hmm...  Most films wait until the climax for that old cliche.  Murder is so common in this world that somebody has to burn up a school bus full of children for the stakes to feel like they've been raised.  The violence isn't so much offensive, as it is tiring.  Imagine bloody carnage on the level of something like the classic splatstick zomcom Dead Alive but mean-spirited, misogynistic, sadistic and excruciatingly drawn out instead.

It's funny how much the plot resembles a typical western but with 80's dystopian cityscape plastered on top.  The lone wanderer rides into town and teams up with the hooker with a heart of gold to take down the ruthless crime lord and his two demented sons, and lead the beleaguered townspeople up in arms against their demonic oppressors.  Writing that description just now I caught myself thinking 'yeah that sounds like it could be a good movie' but then I remembered that I already saw it and I guess the whole things just works better in theory than practice.

~ What about those other fake trailers?  Well Robert Rodriguez directed one for Machete even though he was already directing half of Grindhouse.  The dream became a reality last September when a full length Machete film was released.  Edgar Wright contributed my favorite fake trailer which I won't spoil with any blathering.  Eli Roth contributed Thanksgiving, an almost too-accurate parody of 80's Holiday themed slashed films.  Rob Zombie contributed Werewolf Women Of The S.S. which features Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu shouting 'This my Mecca!' so it's in close contention with Edgar Wright's for my favorite fake trailer.