Sure, it sounds daft, but when you think about it, what does a lawnmower symbolize? Try it this way: who owns lawnmowers? People who have lawns to mow. In other words, people who have a place to live, a place to call their own. So is it any surprise that the Hobo spends a lot of his time peering through the pawn shop window at a lawnmower that costs a mere $49.99?
There’s a slight obstacle: the town he’s just arrived in has a bit of a crime problem, which is like saying the ocean is kinda’ wet. The Drake and his two psychopathic sons pretty much run everything in this city, including the police department, and this trio does their level best to make sure everyone in town is scared shitless of them.
Case in point: when the Hobo first sees them, the Drake and his sons ruthlessly murder one of their own relatives (the Drake’s brother, in fact) by putting a sewer lid necklace around the guy’s throat, dropping him down a manhole, wrapping his head with a barbed wire noose, attaching the other end of the rope to a car, and driving away so quickly that his head comes off with a geyser of blood. It’s so showy and insane and over the top that it’s a sheer wonder that this doesn’t have Troma written all over this. How could anyone other than Lloyd Kaufman come up with violence this absurd?
Well, it is actually writer John Davies and director Jason Eisener who have given this delightful gem of an instant cult classic to us, and neither of them have any affiliation with Troma. It is they who depict one lonely hobo’s mission to clean up this town and make it safe for regular folks, against all odds (of course) and with the aid of a hooker with a heart of gold (naturally).
A lot of the acting is really hammy. Characters like the Drake really call for it. But Eisener has a very important asset on his side in this department: the Hobo is played by none other than Rutger fucking Hauer. It is virtually impossible for Hauer to turn in a bad performance. He could read the nutritional value of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and make it sound intense and cool. In one scene, he threatens a character by saying, “I’m going to use this knife to carve welfare checks out of your skin.” It’s an awkward line that comes off as silly, but Hauer delivers it with such conviction one can’t help but feel a shiver. In another scene, he saves a teenaged prostitute from her pimp by ramming a shotgun against the guy’s face. He says, “You’re fucked.” And then he pulls the trigger. Yet the look on his face is just incredibly scary. He grins like a Sarlacc pit and has an absolutely evil look of glee in his eyes. To say nothing of his hobo-with-a-shotgun speech to a maternity ward full of crying babies . . . .
And as over the top and crazy as the ultraviolence in his movie is, it’s also pretty fucking intense. A lot of very vile and horrible things happen. In the scene where the Hobo decides to purchase a shotgun instead of the lawnmower (they’re both the same price), the pawn shop is robbed by three ski-masked thugs. One of them shoves a gun in a baby’s face in a scene that is genuinely uncomfortable. In another scene, the Drake’s sons trap a group of children on a school bus and use a flamethrower on them. To compound matters, they keep one of the bodies so they can parade the charred skeleton of a child on a news show.
And then there’s the scene where the Hobo earns the money he uses to buy the shotgun. Once seen, it can never be unseen. The look on Hauer’s face when he delivers this performance is . . . ghastly. The bloody grin he displays will haunt you for a long time to come.
Just the title alone is enough to entice you. You know you’re going to see this movie. You know it’ll be good for a few chuckles. But it’s also a shockingly good movie. It will change your life for the better. Hunt it down immediately.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
Written by John Davies
Directed by Jason Eisener
Produced by Magnolia Pictures
86 minutes
2011
$16.99
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