The crème de la crème: “Hobo with a shotgun”

Back then, Rage Against the Machine guitar wizard Tom Morello famously engraved his guitar with the phrase “Arm the Homeless.” Editor/director Jason Eisener takes that radical call to action literally with Hobo with a Shotgun, his 2011 return to ’70s grindhouse flicks. With a leathery Rutger Hauer as the titular antihero, Eisener places Hobo in a nightmarish (and apparently Canadian) dead-end town where crime is rampant, cops are corrupt, and no citizen is safe.

The Hobo trades his long-desired lawnmower for a 12-gauge shotgun and dispenses street justice with bloody composure for 80 minutes before the inevitable showdown with the final boss and his henchmen. With powerful performances, dialogues with gallows humor and a garish, porn-inspired set, Hobo is a superficial, nihilistic throwback to the days of Charles Bronson’s films, when the only way to obtain legal recourse was to point a gun at the muzzle.

The film’s traveling stranger travels in typical boxcar fashion and takes up residence in “Hope Town,” whose welcome sign is spray-painted with the words “Scum Town.” Run by crime boss The Drake and his sadistic sons Ivan and Slick, the town is rife with drugs, prostitution, and all manner of depravity. Anyone who dares cross this twisted trio must endure a series of horrors, including a beating with a razor-sharp baseball bat, a full-body massage with sharpened hockey skates, and – worst of all – a trip to the glory hole, a grisly death by manhole cover, barbed wire, and motorcycles driving in opposite directions.

Our nameless hero hangs out on the fringes of all this terror, scraping together what money he can by begging for a “bum fight” impresario and performing nerdy stunts to buy a lawnmower from a nearby pawn shop. Although we learn little about his backstory, the hobo reveals that he longs to open a lawn care business far from the crime and grime of the city, where he can find a modicum of peace.

One evening, while the Tramp is rummaging through the garbage outside one of the Drakes’ notorious homes, he witnesses an altercation between Ivan and Abby, one of the prostitutes the villain employs. Unusually, he intervenes and rescues Abby from Ivan’s clutches. He then tries to enlist the police’s help in bringing the villain to justice. Unsurprisingly, the authorities are in the villains’ pocket and, due to his lack of foresight, the Tramp is beaten nearly to death and butchered like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Nursed back to health by Abby, the Hobo once again sets his sights on the lawnmower of his dreams. Fate, it seems, has other plans, for just as he has the lawnmower in hand, a horde of heavily armed Drake robbers descend on the pawn shop. Driven to the brink of madness, the Hobo snatches a fully loaded 12-gauge shotgun from a rack and is soon gunning down the robbers, a motley crew of pimps, a pedophile Santa, a squad of corrupt cops, and thugs of all kinds. Though he is celebrated by the innocents of Hope Town—”Parents smile as bodies pile up!” and “Hobo stop begging. Demand. Change!” are some of the pithier headlines in the local papers—this puts him on a collision course with the Drake, his boys, and his duo of hired demonic killers dubbed “The Plague.”

Bloody revenge films of this kind aren’t generally my thing, but the slavish attention to detail shown by the art department, costume designers and set designers won me over. They really manage to make an otherwise charming Canadian town look like quite the shithole (bravo!). And the tongue-in-cheek, reckless performances and raunchy dialogue – “I’ll wash this blood off… with your blood!” – are impressive in both their delivery and their sheer quantity.

Meanwhile, the grizzled, gravelly-voiced, ironic-toned Hauer is clearly enjoying his lead role. It may surprise some why an internationally renowned actor of his caliber would take on such a low-budget project. But his IMDB page reminds us that Hauer has been a genre actor throughout his career, adeptly playing edgy roles in The Hitcher, Sin City, Dracula 3D, and similar films. What isn’t really explainable is that the tramp never seems to run out of ammo, despite killing an entire army of Drake’s scumbags.

So if you’re one of those soulmates who loves buckets of blood and ranks Death Wish high on your best of list, this movie is clearly for you. For the rest of us, Hobo with a Shotgun might be the violent catharsis we need right now.