Hobo with a Shotgun

Studio: Magnet Releasing
Jason Eisener

May 25, 2011 By Selena Fragassi Web Exclusive

If there is a most entertaining part of Hobo with a Shotgun, it undoubtedly lies within the cache of its backstory. Originally a fake teaser before it was a feature film, the abbreviated Hobo was entered into (and won) a 2007 contest to promote Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse collaboration. The selected entries were utilized in various international screenings and, to date, two have yielded feature films-the other being Rodriguez's Machete.

While this Doris Day stroke of luck may seem fortuitous, in actuality it becomes a burden when the production (three years later) tries to puzzle together a 90-minute feature from a two-minute teaser piece that already showed off all the golden eggs in the carton. So what do you do to fill the time? Director Jason Eisener fills it with as much gore, petty dialogue and repetitious violence as possible.

The movie starts with the nameless hobo, played by the Eastwood-overboard Rutger Hauer, who mobilizes on a freight car and descends upon Scum Town, which is quickly portrayed as a looter's paradise with buildings decoupaged in grafitti and an unkempt community of transients who accept $10 bribes from a Baldwin-lookalike trying to piece together some sort of fisticuff snuff film. We soon learn that this Gotham is governed by criminal mastermind Drake whose Joker sons Ivan and Slick have quickly taken to the family business, sparing not even the life of their uncle in an early terrorist scene because "the cocksucker gave me the shittiest Christmas presents."

Through it all, the hobo remains a diligent field observer, too focused on his own mission of raising enough money to buy a $49.99 lawnmower at Scum Town's pawn shop so he and the town tart Abby (Molly Dunsworth) can run away and find salvation by opening up a landscaping business. This unlikely Christ/Mary Magdalene duo form a predictable bond after the hobo saves Abby from Slick's sexual assault and Abby in turn gives him a place to stay in her emotionally vacant dwelling after an attack by Drake's sons left the man with, compared to the rest of the film, surface cuts. In this turning point of the film, Abby and the hobo become involved in a superfluous discourse about grizzly bears and the hobo instinctually turns primordial arriving at the pawn shop the next morning to buy not the lawnmower but a shotgun with money earned from the snuff filmmaker for chewing glass.

Unlike other superheroes whose Gandhi approach to non-violence (or a few comic book punches therein) spares their image, the hobo becomes just as much a law-and-order-shunning vigilante who takes out "the bad guys" with a never-ending spray of bullets. And in the end he gets no redemption, vowing to continue the battle with Drake in hell as both begin to flatline in the final duel.

Sure Eisener does a solid on folkloric '70s grindhouse films, but are viewers supposed to base the movie's merit on how well it follows the script? In any direction, Hobo with a Shotgun could have turned into a simple pleasure Western, an innovative sci-fi narrative, or an arthouse action film-but instead the plot was as drivel as the movie's name. If Eisener is to learn something from this early project, it's that genre should not define a film ... nor should a preview predicate the feature presentation.

(www.magnetreleasing.com/hobowithashotgun)

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