Hobo With A Shotgun

Rutger Hauer is nine kinds of awesome. He's one of  those actors that you know, but you don't really know. He's not flashy or A-list or a Scientologist. He doesn't have to have leading roles to get the job done. He's done tons of work and, chances are, you've never heard of him. Or maybe only vaguely. He does serious roles in serious films such as an SS officer in a made for TV movie. He does blockbusters such as "Batman Begins" and "Sin City". He can be thought provoking (Blade Runner), or just downright cheesy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie). And then, sometimes, he can do something that is totally off the wall and ridiculous and no one thinks anything of it.

Like tonight's movie.

A history lesson: a while back, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did a double feature send up of old '70's-80's exploitation movies called "Grindhouse". It was for the most part a little forgettable, except for a series of fake trailers done by guest directors. Intentionally over the top and wildly insane, the trailers did leave quite the impression on people who just love awesome. I mean, who doesn't want to see "Werewolf Women of the S.S"? Especially if Nicolas Cage really does play Fu Manchu?

You know it'd be awesome.

So much awesome was put on screen that all of the trailers are now either being considered for real movies, in production, or filmed. The first one done is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies of all time, "Machete". The movie itself is campy, cheesy, and gloriously unforgiving in its level of insanity. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is; a movie about a ex-Mexican Federale day laborer hired to kill a senator who gets double crossed, shot, and goes on a wild rampage of revenge. How can you go wrong with that setup? It's the kind of project that pulls in stars like Robert De Niro and Jessica Alba, then ratchets up the awesome with Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Michele Rodriguez.

And, of course, Danny F*****G Trejo.

Above: 100% pure Badass

The second trailer to be given the full feature film treatment was tonight's selection, "Hobo With a Shotgun". If you can't guess the basic premise just from the name, you probably shouldn't be here. A transient ends up in Hope City, a place filled with drugs, prostitution, and violence. He gets fed up with it, gets a shotgun, and proceeds to cleans house. That's the short version.

The long version gets progressively strange. The Hobo, played by Rutger Hauer, wants to earn $49.99 in order to start a lawnmower business and make something out of himself. The town is run by a utterly evil man, The Drake, and his two sons of equal amoralness. The Hobo (no, he doesn't have a name aside from The Hobo) befriends a prostitute, Abby, and has a complete non sequitur conservation with her about bears. There's a pair of assassins encased in head to toe armor sent after The Hobo called the Plague. A school bus gets torched, a hospital gets wrecked, lots of limbs go flying, one of the Drake's sons gets electrocuted by getting the hockey skate he's wearing caught in a toaster, the cops of the town are in the pocket of The Drake and don't care who knows it, Abby creates a shield out of the lawnmower that still works and a shotgun/axe combo since she's an expert welder.

And Rutger Hauer is a hobo. With a shotgun.

Rutger Hauer as The Hobo. Shotgun as Himself.

The absurdity of the whole movie is it's biggest asset and its biggest liability. While "Machete" was absurd, it managed to temper it a little and try to make the movie fun and the plot at least marginally convincing. It didn't rely so much on the shock value of massive amounts of gorn (though it does have a bit of that) as it did on set pieces of awesomeness bordering on insanity. But, never once in that movie did I say "Well, that's just wrong on so many levels".

Not so much with HWaS. It doesn't border on insanity, it goes over to it full bore (pun!). It's sole intention seems to make every scene more offensive and grotesque than the last. Sometimes this kind of boundary pushing is OK. It can be fun to shut off your brain and just have a good time with a movie. But, there's a difference between pushing boundaries and obliterating them. No, I haven't seen someone's head get torn off by a rope pulled by a speeding car, and a woman in a bikini dancing in ecstasy in the fountain of blood it produces. And I probably didn't need to see it.

But, like "Machete" the movie does stay true to itself. It is what it is and it makes no apologies. It goes for over the top at full speed and never stops until it hits the credits. It's insane, visceral, campy, and it has Rutger Hauer. Being Rutger Hauer. So, it's not ALL bad.

Now, when am I going to get to see "Machete Kills"?

Sam's rating: 3 out of 5 formula ounces