5 Feet of Fury

Rick McGinnis reviews ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’ — and agrees with me that Hauer’s ‘Tannhauser Gate’ speech is overrated b.s.

Rick McGinnis writes:

Jason Eisener’s film began as a trailer in Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse project, the same ‘70s exploitation movie love letter that produced last year’s Machete, the innovation this time around being that the Canadian government got to pay for a film where the heroine gets her throat sliced open with a hacksaw and the villain uses a homeless man as a piñata.

(For readers outside Canada, it has to be noted at this point that, unlike Hollywood, it’s government agencies, not movie studios, that ultimately produce films in this country. The result is taxpayer dollars used to make a film meant to pay tribute to movies that were once made with laundered mob money. Make your own wry aside here.) (…)

Playing critic with a film like Hobo With A Shotgun is almost pointless, since it sets the bar so low from its point of inspiration that you’re forced to make up new criteria: Is the hobo using appropriate shotgun ammunition? Is that a reasonable splatter pattern for a head shot? Are the titles at the beginning and the credits at the end…?

Funnily enough, Rick’s “new criteria” sound like my old ones:

“Vin Diesel is using a marine shotgun on dry land because…?”

And don’t watch a World War II movie with Arnie unless you want to know all about “the wrong kind of tank.”

UPDATE:

What is so unbelievable about “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion”? I mean, they’re “attack ships.”

UPDATE:

Try to die during a heavy rainstorm. Escape from your hospital bed and run like hell to make it to the roof. It won’t be easy because you’ll be very sick, obviously, but pretend you’re a super-human android-clone of some kind. Timing is everything; hope somebody finds you within about two minutes of your expiry. If at all possible try to get ahold of a dove, or at least a pidgeon.