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Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) Review
Guns, gore, girls, homeless people, what’s not to love?
This film came to my attention a while ago, when it was first released, and I was a bit worried that it would be awful. Then, after looking into it, I couldn’t wait to see it, so I was delighted to find it cheap in a second hand shop not long after being released. I say this, but I only just got round to watching it, simply because I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but I’m glad to say it’s far better than I could have imagined.
Hobo With A Shotgun is a wonderfully grotesque Canadian exploitation film based around the winning Robert Rodriquez grindhouse trailer from the South By Southwest grindhouse trailers contest. If you think you can guess the plot from the title, think again. It’s not about a random hobo with a shotgun who decides to kill people for no reason, it’s almost the opposite.
Hobo With A Shotgun holds a rating of 6.3/10 on IMDB, and 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. This is pretty impressive, considering how many people would probably watch it and not fully appreciate the style of it (obviously professional reviewers will understand it immediately). If this film wasn’t tongue in cheek, and was trying it’s hardest to be deadly serious, it would be one of the worst films of all time, but luckily, it’s deliberately trying it’s darndest to be like the low budget gorefests that you might catch late one night on a horror movie channel. A lot of the plot of this film doesn’t make sense, but that’s not a complaint. The basic plot is this: a homeless man arrives in a new town, which is full of evil people, so he decides to take justice into his own hands. Surely, if he arrives in this dodgy place, he could just leave…
Hobo With A Shotgun is so wonderfully over the top, that you don’t even laugh at the insanity, you just get used to it and stop questioning it after a while. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s an amazing thing. Another great thing in this film is the camerawork, there’s lots of great cuts in the perfect place, and sometimes the angles are perfect for the scene. This is only a tiny thing to some people, but it really helped me feel like part of the action. 
This film is absolutely ridiculous, if you thought Planet Terror was too crazy for you, stay the hell away from Hobo With A Shotgun. My personal favourite scene is the sequence in the hospital, it has everything that you need, a bit of romance, an amazing monologue, and an insane action sequence involving nooses and grappling hooks. Unfortunately, I do have one complaint. The ending. Without giving too much away, the film builds up to a huge climax (like all good action movies), and delivers a bit of insane gore and action, with one part that was just horrible, even for me, but then the film pretty much just ends, without clearing everything up properly, it’s not even really a cliffhanger.
At the end of the day, Hobo With A Shotgun is a must see, especially if you enjoyed the other grindhouse films, despite the fact this wasn’t directed by Tarrentino or Rodriguez. I’ve got to say, I’ve seen a hell of a lot of films, and Hobo With A Shotgun is genuinely one of my favourites of all time.
Hobo With A Shotgun (2011): 9/10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_With_A_Shotgun
