This one goes to eleven. Hobo With a Shotgun is the second feature film developed from the faux coming-attractions trailers in Grindhouse, and it’s a wildly over-the-top pastiche of 1970s-80s vigilante films, full of violence, gore, loud noises and unbridled evil grimaces. 

            Actually, referring to Hobo With a Shotgun as a pastiche of vigilante films is somewhat misleading, since it’s chiefly the plot which is reminiscent of Death Wish, Fighting Mad, The Exterminator, etc.  Hobo avoids the realistic visual style of these films and opts for heavily-saturated colour, high-contrast photography, distorted fish-eye shots, extreme camera angles, and other stylised, expressionistic formal attributes not utilised in most action films, which tended (especially in the 70s-80s), towards a more realistic mise-en-scene and a more conventional filmmaking style. 

            The  dystopian-fantasy atmosphere of Hobo is bolstered by the appearance of two heavily-armoured (robots? cyborgs?) villains (referred to singularly as “Plague”), one character using ice skates as weapons (that makes two recent films with this motif; see also Limitless, which wasn’t even set in Canada!), rampant drug use, video-taped bum fights, scenes of violent orgies (and orgies of violence) and the like, once again—because of their extreme, bizarre nature—slightly at odds with the general reality-based action-crime genre of earlier years.  Hobo With a Shotgun owes as much to the Mad Max trilogy, Café Flesh and Class of Nuke ‘Em High as it does to Walking Tall, Black Oak Conspiracy, et al.

            Hobo is not a “spoof” of vigilante films, but it has its blackly-humorous aspects (well, duh).  Most of these moments are courtesy of the film’s deliberately outrageous nature (a pedophile Santa Claus, a giant octopus in the back room of Plague’s evil fortress, topless women beating a hanging man like a piñata), although there are a fair number of in-jokes (some will be obvious to B-movie fans, while others are apparently Canada-specific). 

            The actors are all spot-on, though “under-playing” was definitely not a term in the director’s lexicon.  Rutger Hauer, convincingly weatherbeaten and slightly Jon Voight-ish in appearance, and Molly Dunsworth (as Abby) are the only two players who turn in more than a one-note performance: they’re both quite good, working wonders with a script that doesn’t devote much time to a backstory or character development.  The other actors are mostly live-action cartoons, but that’s not a criticism.  This is exactly the right tone for the film, and provides a nice contrast with the more nuanced, realistic characters of the Hobo and Abby.

            As Hobo With a Shotgun begins, the titular hobo—as of yet, still sans his titular shotgun—arrives in a depressed town and goes about his business (collecting plastic bottles in a shopping cart; hey, it puts coins in the grouch bag).  He’s appalled by the general lawlessness of the town; the crime and atrocities are spear-headed by flamboyant gangster Drake and his sons, Slick and Ivan.  Still, Hobo tries to keep a low profile, it doesn’t pay to make waves…until the night he rescues prostitute Abby from taking a one-way ride with Slick, then delivers the unconscious junior villain to the local police station, expecting justice.  Oops, bad move—can you say, “corrupt cops?”

            Carved up and tossed into a trash dumpster, Hobo survives and, remarkably, is still intent on buying a lawnmover (this is explained much later, in a rare character-development moment) and living a peaceful life. But the sudden appearance of 3 violent robbers in a pawnshop interrupts his shopping and spurs him into making an impulse buy instead: a shotgun.  And so it begins…

            Hobo With a Shotgun races along at breakneck speed, pausing only a few times in the latter half for soliloquies (one by Hobo, directed at a roomful of newborn babies in hospital—they all begin crying as he says they’re likely to wind up drug addicts or whores!—and another by Abby, re: respecting “homeless” people).  Mostly, however, the film’s divided into two main motifs: Hobo killing sleazy criminals, and Drake’s henchmen trying to kill Hobo.  While Hobo sticks to his trusty firearm, the villains display considerable ingenuity and imagination in their methods and choice of weapons, ranging from decapitation-via-manhole-cover to the old reliable baseball-bat-studded-with-razor-blades (in addition to more conventional means of mayhem).  The gore is prevalent and graphic but reasonably cartoonish (the most cringe-inducing scenes are, understandably, those in which Hobo and Abby are injured, since we care about them).

            If there’s one criticism I would voice about Hobo With a Shotgun, it’s that the conclusion seems slightly rushed and anti-climactic.  Heck, I’d have liked a happy ending, I’d have accepted an ambivalent ending, but even a nihilistic conclusion (such as we get here…ooh, spoiler!) could have been delivered in such a way as to provide catharsis and closure.  A bit more drama, a few famous last words, one spectacular final gesture, some apocalyptic carnage, whatever…would have been nice. 

            This isn’t much more than a loud, wacky, violent piece of genre entertainment intended as a tribute to exploitation films and aimed at fans of such, but it’s put together professionally (despite the relative inexperience of the filmmakers), with a distinctive “look” that lifts it above its low-budget niche.  I was never bored and almost always entertained by the…Hobo With a Shotgun!