Geekscape at Sundance 2011 – Hobo With a Shotgun Review
Geekscape at Sundance 2011
Hobo with a Shotgun
Category: Park City at Midnight
Director: Jason Eisener
Screenwriter: Johnathan Davies
Canada, 2011, 86min, color
Principal Cast: Rutger Hauer, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey, Nick Bateman
I would say that Hobo with a Shotgun is my favorite film thus far at the 2011 Sundance Festival! Wildly entertaining, and laugh out loud funny, it really hit the spot… and I was seeing this movie at 7pm, not even at midnight (as part of the Park City at Midnight series)! Usually the press screening audience is very reserved – this is the only film so far, where at the end the audience full of press broke out with applause!
It doesn’t matter if you are a fan of campy gore movies on not, this film is very likely to make you laugh, and occasionally gasp (as the producers certainly spared no expense on synthetic blood)! Shot in parts of Canada, the feel of this “Scum Town” where our main character arrives riding in a freight train car, is quite remote and hopeless. Faced with complete lawlessness, the citizens are but puppets of “The Drake,” a super rich cold-blooded guy, with two equally cold-blooded sons. There is a vast population of hobos, and they are seen as objects to torture and destroy in every way possible. They are essentially disposable toys for the Drakes. They show no mercy and have no compassion in their killing. The rest of the population sees hobos as merely a nuisance. That is until one of those hobos picks up a shotgun! The “call to arms” moment in the film occurs when the self proclaimed “hobo with a shotgun” chooses to buy a shotgun for $49.99 instead of a long-coveted $49.99 lawnmower – and all hell breaks loose from there.
This might all sound pretty silly by now but hang in there. What makes all of the silliness work is the amazing straight performance from Rutger Hauer. He commands attention on screen and is a delight to watch!
The film is filled with memorable Gauntlet-style quotes and headlines such as: “Parents smile as bodies pile”, “When life gives you razor blades you make a baseball bat covered in razorblades” and “You can’t beat your wife like you can beat a whore.” Of note, there is also a plethora of violent, hungry young ladies on screen, such as a woman in a white fur coat and a bikini enjoying a blood fountain, and some gratuitous female boobage in a hobo piñata scene (yes, there’s a hobo piñata scene). The color and feel of this film certainly pay homage to the 70’s and 80’s John Carpentar style genre films like Escape from Precinct 13 and They Live. While director Eisener was as able and ready to show gore as the audience was to receive it, it is the perfectly timed humor that ultimately makes the movie and keeps it worthy of applause.
