Movie review: Hobo with a Shotgun- Rutger Hauer slumming it

Stars: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth.
Director: Jason Eisener
Released: January 2011
Website: http://www.magnetreleasing.com/hobowithashotgun/
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_with_a_Shotgun

What am I doing reviewing one of those silly exploitation flicks that glorify bad 1970’s cinema, whilst ignoring all of the important issues of the times in which we are actually living? I know what I’m going to get so why bother? Why put myself through the agony? It would be like buying a Marvel comic where a team of dumb ass government agents fly around the world like super aerobicised morons, saving the world from ‘evil,’ whilst ignoring all of the obvious evil emanating from the country that they’re actually living in, and then wasting my time even further by writing a critical review about how stupid it all is. A total waste of time, right? And that’s why I don’t review Marvel comics anymore. Why waste my time by stating the obvious? So why am I reviewing a blood and guts torture movie made by middle class media students? I already know what I’ll get, so what’s the point?  I’ll explain myself.

First off, I didn’t pay for the movie. I recorded it, late night, on a horror movie channel, and later on when I was half dozing after a night shift of work I had it on in the background, determining to give it five minutes of my time before deleting it, and never thinking about it ever again.

So I gave it five minutes, and to my immense surprise, ended up watching the entire movie. The main reason was the lead, Rutger Hauer, or the blonde villain from Blade Runner, and the second reason was that the villains were convincing in that they got off on their evil acts, and I wanted to hang around to see them get their comeuppance at the conclusion of the movie, which of course they did.

The movie looks awful when it’s shot outside, where the film-makers don’t have the budget to make it look like anything other than a cheaply shot, low budget video nasty. Shooting in what appears to be a nice middle class suburb doesn’t help either. There’s no sense of danger, no threat. It just looks like a bunch of actors messing around outside their Mom’s house.

The cast of extras are particularly awful in this movie, in that they look like comfortable middle class media students, all just happy to be there, having a great time and trying to get their trendy goateed faces on the camera. That’s not good. They are supposed to be beaten down and corrupted victims of a psychopathic gangster who controls the town, not soft suburbanites who haven’t had a day’s hardship in their entire lives.

It looks a lot better when the action is shot inside, as the lighting is much easier to control and they go for an overly stylised, almost trippy look that has a sense of dirt and grime that the outside shots cannot match. This makes me question the decisions made by the director. If the outside, daylight shots look bad, why use them at all? Shoot it at night, and hide it.

Rutger Hauer is mostly decent in his role of the vigilante who fights back against the corrupt gangsters and cops that are controlling the city, and some of his lines are well written and memorable. I also liked the main female lead and her relationship with Hauer was convincing and touching. The best villain was Slick, a particularly weasly, wimpy, sadistic, nasty piece of work. A spoilt daddy’s boy, who gets off on abusing his power, it’s very satisfying when he gets what he deserves near the end of the movie.

I disliked the close-up, graphic violence that the movie often times revelled in, and thought a lot of it was a bit over the top, a bit unnecessary, particularly the scene where Slick takes a saw to the neck of the female lead. That was nasty, and it didn’t add anything to the movie. You don’t have to show that kind of thing, and when you do so it just shows a lack of imagination. Some of the blood bag splatters were pretty unconvincing as well. Is it supposed to be fake or gross? This movie did both, and I didn’t like either approach.

As the end credits rolled I was largely glad that I didn’t delete this movie after the first five minutes. Some of it looked awfully cheap, and I disliked the unnecessarily graphic, over the top violence, but some of it worked really well. My lasting image is of a scene where Rutger Hauer talks to a ward of new-born babies in a hospital. It looked great, and the dialogue really had some power to it as well. I’d recommend you hang in there with this movie, give it a chance and keep watching until the ending where the bad guys get what they deserve. Some of the dialogue is really well written, and there are a couple of decent performances in there as well. I could have done without all of the blood and torture scenes, but there’s a good movie lurking in there somewhere. Rating: 6.5/10