Hobo with a Shotgun Movie Review

Title: Hobo with a Shotgun

Directed by: Jason Eisener

Starring: Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, The Rite), Gregory Smith (Conception, The Patriot) and Robb Wells (The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day)

While some highly-anticipated movies live up to their pre-release hype, others fail to include the aspects that fans hope to see. The new grindhouse-inspired Magnet Releasing movie, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun,’ is unfortunately part of the latter group. The movie’s fake trailer, which was included in the Canadian release of the 2007 double feature ‘Grindhouse,’ received massive fan support, and the public demand it be made into a full-length feature. Jason Eisener, who has risen to fame as a short-film director and who helmed the fake trailer, was ambitious enough to give into the fans’ demand, but was ultimately unable to create relateable characters and a developed story.

‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ follows the title character (played by Rutger Hauer), simply known as Hobo, as he travels into a destitute city on a freight train. While he hopes to make a better life for himself, what he really discovers is that the city’s crime boss, Drake (portrayed by Brian Downey), and his two murderous sons, Slick (played by Gregory Smith) and Ivan (portrayed by Nick Bateman), rule the streets. The three incite fear into, and control, everyone who lives in the city, even the police.

After Hobo sees a second-hand lawn mower in the window of pawn shop, he is determined to clean up the city and make it a better place. But once he realizes that he won’t be able to do that while Drake and his sons rule, Hobo steals a shotgun from the pawn shop, and kills everyone he deems as a threat.

Expectations for the grindhouse-inspired film were high, as Eisener and screenwriter John Davies have long been fans of the genre. While Eisener has said ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ isn’t a true tribute to the grindhouse films of the 1970s and ’80s, which he and Davies continuously watched together growing up, it does embody “everything that we love about the genre; and (it) continues to build on it.”

Also, ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ won the Grindhouse Trailer Contest that was held at the SXSW Film Festival. Robert Rodriguez, who directed ‘Planet Terror,’ one of the two films included in ‘Grindhouse,’ picked Eisener and Davies’ fake trailer as the winner of the contest; their prize was having the trailer be included in the Canadian release of ‘Grindhouse.’ The trailer then received massive industry support from such outlets as Ain’t It Cool News, as well as a huge fan base through YouTube.

While Eisener and Davies wanted to somewhat praise the ’70s and ’80s films they loved so much with ‘Hobo with a Shotgun,’ their final attempt failed to honor them, and will somewhat disappoint fans of the genre and the fake trailer. While Eisener and Davies deserve credit for including the message that anyone can defeat crime and criminals, which is a rarity in grindhouse/horror films, the rest of the movie wasn’t well-planned or scripted. The plot and the characters, even Hobo, the movie’s protagonist, were undeveloped; the characters had no clear motives to what they were doing, and as a result, Davies had no way to resolve any of the conflicts that he included in the script.

While Davies did include some humorous jokes to make up for the lack of motive on Drake and Hobo’s parts, the movie as a whole seemed to be one continuous gag. While some of the jokes were funny, they quickly became redundant, as Slick and Ivan just seemed to care about sex and physically hurting people. Many of Hobo’s actions were also cruel, stereotypical puns of the homeless. While the point of ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ was to show what life is like for people who live on the streets, Eisener and Davies didn’t present the jokes with a sensitivity towards them.

Hauer, who has acted in such movies as ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘Sin City,’ was cast as Hobo because as the film’s producer, Niv Finchman, said, it was important “that the lead…be someone iconic, someone who captures the fan base of the trailer but went much further beyond that.” However, he unfortunately didn’t bring anything to the character that will make viewers sympathize with him. Hauer doesn’t seem to care about anything that’s going on around him, and just seems interested in the stunts he’s in.

But Eisener made the right decision when he decided to film ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. The sets perfectly reflected the dark, seedy world that is consistent with a city filled with crime, disease and poverty. Not only did the streets appear menacing and look like they would be where a crime boss like Drake would operate, they also had an industrial, decayed feel to them that realistically showed where hobos would live.

While ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ received overwhelmingly positive reviews when it premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and was based on the critic and fan favorite fake trailer, die-hard fans of the traditional grindhouse genre most likely won’t appreciate the movie. Even with the rare moral message for an action film, the iconic Hauer and some humorous jokes, Eisener and Davies unfortunately weren’t able to translate what made the fake trailer successful onto the big screen.

Written by: Karen Benardello