Andy Gapin

Ah, the second Grindhouse faux-trailer-turned-full-feature. To put it bluntly, Hobo with a Shotgun is absolutely brutal. I’m not sure that I want to say this in any definitive way, but it may have been the most brutal movie I’ve ever seen…and that’s saying a lot.

Hobo with a Shotgun is exactly what it’s supposed to be, a hobo…with a shotgun. While Rutger Hauer does in fact “deliver justice one shell at a time” just as the tagline says, the brutality comes much less from him and more from the bad guys. I won’t spoil things too much, but one scene actually caused my fiancée to tell me she couldn’t watch it anymore. It was less a blood, guts, and gore thing, and entirely just a principle thing. Hobo with a Shotgun is not for the faint of heart.

Where the movie lacks a little is with the actual hobo-delivered-shotgun-shell-goodness, there could have been more of that as it mostly took up only a small portion of the film. Thankfully, this is made up for with violence like the scene mentioned above. Hobo with a Shotgun is light on the story, but there’s enough to get you by and more than enough great one liners like “I’m going to wash this blood off with your blood” and “because sometimes on the streets, a broom ain’t gonna cut it! That’s when ya gotta get a shotgun!” to make up for it.

Out of the two Grindhouse flicks and Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun is probably at the bottom of the list, but it is the smuttiest, the most sadistically violent, the campiest,  the brutalist, and the most nutso. That’s a a lot of superlatives, but these are all of the things that Hobo with a Shutgun was supposed to be and that’s why it works. Highly entertaining.

If this kind of quality can be kept while turning the Grindhouse trailers into actual films, I say keep ‘em coming.

Rating: A

If ever there was something that I never thought needed proving, it’s that you can start with a trailer first and make the movie second. Apparently, this works for Robert Rodriguez…quite well. Machete successfully takes what was just supposed to be a fake movie trailer and turns it into a full length feature. While this is not the only fake trailer from Grindhouse to get turned into a full length film, it is the first and it’s a good sign for the others. However, supposedly, Rodriguez has had the screenplay laying around since 1993, which would make the original fake trailer less just a collection of ideas and more of a pitch for a fully developed idea. Either way, it’s great.

Machete is violent, messy, and unapologetic. The insanity and blood start off instantly and there is very little relenting on the bad-assery. Machete, as a character and a movie, really doesn’t mess around, but Machete as a movie doesn’t make itself easy to be taken seriously. That’s a good thing, though. Even with such a stacked cast, there isn’t a single moment where Machete tricks you into thinking this is a serious film. That works very well in its favor.

Machete brings a solid 105 minutes of entertainment though violence, blood, eye candy, and the ridiculous. Highly recommended.

Rating: A-

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, seriously, Hobo With a Shotgun. This trailer is mind-blowingly awesome, check it out.