Parents Smile As Bodies Pile
Hobo With a Shotgun has one of the simplest movie titles in film history. Along with recent films, Man on a Ledge and Snakes on a Plane, you pretty much get the plot of the film right in the movie title. No alien invasions or family vacations here. Just a Hobo with a Shotgun... and blood.
Hobo With A Shotgun stars Rutger Hauer as THE Hobo (duh!) who, in the beginning of the film, hopes on a train looking for a new start. But instead finds Hope Scum Town. The town is run by a sadistic businessman-like goon named The Drake (Seinfeld fans?) and his equally sadistic sons Ivan and Slick (oh yeah, nice evil names).
His first day in town, he witnesses an execution of The Drake's brother who gets his head ripped off by putting his body in a sewer, cutting a hole inside of the sewer lid to put his head in and then tying a rope with a barbed wire necklace to a truck. Head pops off, blood sprays everywhere like a old-school Martial Arts film and then a woman comes and takes a shower in the raining blood. I don't know, I thought it was really stupid.
The Hobo later meets a prostitute named Abby who helps him after a skirmish the Hobo had with police officers. She even helps him defeat The DRAKE. Abby adds very little to the emotional depth the film extremely lacks.
Pretty much every character in this film is a waste of space really. I'm not saying that that is a bad thing -- I mean that literally. There isn't a lot to like about the characters. I seriously DID NOT care for anybody. Now I get it, this type of movie isn't really here to have a good story and all that, I get it. But you have to at least care about the characters A LITTLE BIT. I didn't care for any of them at all. But I say this -- the film made me laugh!
The funniest scene in my opinion is when the Hobo gets a shotgun and after a couple of scenes to establish that the Hobo is serving justice in this town, he blasts a guy for stealing newspaper out of a newspaper stand off camera. The way that it was done -- I don't know but it just made me burst out laughing.
The lighting was pretty cool. All the reds, blues and greens added a nice effect to the film.
The way the film ends was... just really random. I wasn't a fan of the ending. No spoilers here but you definitely get a sense of "Wait... that's it???"
I've definitely seen bloodier movies. Ones I actually enjoyed. This isn't necessarily one of them. It had some funny moments but the dialogue is really stupid, the characters are very undertoned and the acting was just terrible. I didn't completely hate it but if I was drunk and it was playing on TV or something then I would possibly try to comprehend sitting down to watch Hobo With a Shotgun.
(If you can keep me still)
So bad it's good vibe does not apply to me with this film.