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Another fake trailer ends up being turned into a real movie. Where Machete was an upgrade of the trailer, Hobo With A Shotgun uses an entirely new cast and is completely re-shot.Not a bad choice considering the premise might have been funny, but what was on screen in the trailer looked too much like 70s home video to score today. Enter Rutger Hauer as the titular hobo, with a sign stating that he’s tired and needs money for a lawnmower, and you’ve got yourself at least a star that can act. Too bad the rest of the cast is shitty as you would expect from a movie that could have been Troma release.
But this isn’t a movie one would watch for Oscar performances. This is a movie only a certain crowd would watch, crowd that enjoys exploitation movies and an exploitation movie this is. They could have gone a different road with this movie, but Hauer only gets a scene or two where his monologue elevates above the rest of the movie, a movie that has him eat glass, cover himself in intestines and getting “scum” carved into his chest. And that is just the tip of the iceberg as this is a movie that is so much over the top in terms of gore, violence and (amateuristic) acting it should have been released by Troma. For those who are not familiar with Troma: they make cheap movies full of ultra-violence and gore on a shoestring budget. This movie reminded me of The Toxic Avenger at almost every turn. The bad guys who are the very epitome of evil, the extreme violence and deaths and there’s even a scene in which some guys rob a store and put a young child at gun point just like in The Toxic Avenger.
I have no problem with movies like these. They serve a certain audience and can be fun to watch from time to time. But they aren’t most peoples cup of tea and thus Hobo With A Shotgun caters to a small crowd. If they had let go of the fake trailer and wrote a script that didn’t revolve around the scenes in the trailer they could have gotten a very decent movie out of it with a good actor in the lead. Now they only have a good actor in the lead.
This is a harmless little movie, and I found it fun to watch. But having a good time doesn’t equal a good movie. It has a fairly simple story and is more of an homage to the times of the video nasties back in the 80s. The movie is even set in the 80s. But while Planet Terror was in on the joke all the time when it was homaging movies that were played straight, this movie is an homage to movies that actually were in on the joke almost 30 years ago, thus it feels a bit tired. Like the Hobo.
