In Hope Town, degradation and crime reign, as the criminal Drake and his sons dictate the law, controlling the police and organizing brutal last-man-standing matches where the city's inhabitants must kill each other for his entertainment. One day, a vagabond arrives in Hope Town and soon finds himself in the crosshairs of this oppressive climate. Tired of life and abuses, the man picks up a rifle and, together with the prostitute Abby whom he has just saved from a terrible fate, begins to deliver justice in his own way: by blowing away rotten heads in the city's streets!
Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly the modern King Midas of cinema. Indeed, like the mythical ruler of Phrygia, everything he touches turns to gold, even those operations that apparently are less fortunate.
As is known, in 2007 the director of 'Pulp Fiction' and his longtime partner Robert Rodriguez had the idea of paying homage to one of the key places in their cinematic formation: the grindhouse theaters, third-rate cinemas in the urban outskirts of the United States that showed third or fourth-run films when they were lucky; strongly genre films that were often combined into double bills, i.e., two for the price of one. The result was 'Grindhouse,' a double bill by Tarantino ('Death Proof') and Rodriguez ('Planet Terror') that turned out to be a commercial flop for the Weinstein brothers' Dimension. And yet... and yet the magic was made, and since then a series of grindhouse-style films have invaded the market, especially the American independent one, trying to recall - starting from the vintage posters - themes and carefreeness of certain B-movie cinema from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. From 'Zombie Strippers!' to 'Bitch Slap - The Overloaded,' through 'Hell Ride' and the upcoming 'Stuck,' we've seen some good ones, but it has also happened that some fragments of the very 'Grindhouse' have taken on a life of their own. The films by Tarantino and Rodriguez were indeed interspersed with fake trailers that simulated the grindhouse schedules in every way, and two of these fake trailers have become full-length films. We know all about 'Machete,' directed by Rodriguez himself, but in Italy little is known about 'Hobo with a Shotgun.'
'Hobo with a Shotgun' is the trailer that won the SXSW Grindhouse Contest, a contest organized by Robert Rodriguez near the release of 'Grindhouse' in theaters: the fake trailer that resulted in the winner would be included in the DVD of the film. Jason Eisener won with this particular idea of the homeless avenger, and the rest is history.
Eisener, who until then had made a name for himself with the promising splatter short film 'Treevenge,' builds with 'Hobo with a Shotgun' a revival of the '80s underground exploitation cinema. Absolutely not recommended for well-meaning people, dirty, bad, and incorrect to the extreme, where even children meet a bad end. If we stop at a surface analysis, Eisener's film is almost anti-cinema: little interested in a convincing narrative path and superficial in the characterization of the characters but at the same time highly intent on the spectacularization of death... preferably the most splatter possible. The festival of gore, in short, which the director immerses in a degraded location that greatly resembles the cult of Michael Muro's 'Horror in Bowery Street,' also for the choice of a homeless man as the protagonist.
And it is precisely the point of view of this homeless man (and nameless) that provides a key to reading the film. Hobo - as the homeless are called in a derogatory way in American slang - is a man who has nothing to lose and nothing to gain in a life that has already turned its back on him. This vagabond, played by Rutger Hauer in one of his best performances in recent years, arrives in a provincial town in the same way as the lone cowboy typical of spaghetti westerns. And it is known that when a man without a name and a dark past arrives in a lawless country, trouble is guaranteed. Only in 'Hobo with a Shotgun' the country has no law because the police are corrupt to the bone and respond to the orders of Duke (Brian Downey), the evil landlord who has thrown the place into chaos and delinquency, organizing sadistic matches in which the contestants die in the most atrocious ways. It is useless to try to restore order with good intentions; the vagabond is forced to wield a pump-action shotgun and, helped by the sweet prostitute Abby (Molly Dunsworth), is ready to blow away as many rotten heads as possible.
In 'Hobo with a Shotgun,' it is possible to read a not very veiled criticism of the society of indifference, in which there is no complicity, the next is not helped, and absolute anarchy is lived. Obviously, Eisener's primary interest is to offer the spectator a fun and incorrect show, rich in atrocious killings and perpetually over the top.
Immersed in this '80s atmosphere, with saturated colors (we can read at the beginning of the film about the use of Technicolor) and music strongly locatable in the Reagan era, 'Hobo with a Shotgun' is a work devoted to excess. Absolutely irresistible for those who love a certain type of cinema, but at the same time easy to attack for those who in certain narrative and visual mechanics do not navigate.
Rounded-up vote.
Watch the FAKE GRINDHOUSE trailer of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
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