I'm getting too old for this

Talking about Hobo With a Shotgun the next day made it sound amazing: "There's this bit where they put steel plates on bumper cars and explode old peoples heads with them!" "The girl gets her hand mashed off with a lawn mower and then uses the smashed up arm bone stump to gut the bad guy!" "They have these noose harpoon guns that mean that after they hamstring people, they can shoot them up into the ceiling so that they hang to death!"

But I'm getting ahead on myself.

Hobo With a Shotgun is a Canadian film from the same people who brought the world the trash cinema classics The Red Violin, Last Night and Blindness.  It takes place in Halifax and tells the story of a hobo who comes to town with the dream of setting up his very own lawn mowing company but, after being pushed too far, trades the lawn mower for a shotgun and cinemagic is created!

Pretty much everything sucks in this movie.  From the murder of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys in the first five minutes to the use of garish lighting (Referencing the same colour palate which Dario Argento used in Inferno, Interestingly enough [Get off the stage, nerd boy!]) to cover up bad special effects.  When there's not something incredibly offensive on screen, the movie's fairly sluggish and boring.  There's a scene in which the Hobo talks about the power bears for 15 and a half million years.

That said, it's also pretty great.  It's offensive to just about everything, pushes the limits of bad taste, creates a real sense of dread for the main characters and features Rutger Hauer accidentally showing up playing a tragic Shakespearian lead in a cheap Troma knock off.

Had I have watched this movie 10 years ago, I would have loved it and watched it twenty more times.  But I'm getting old, I guess and was frustrated with it.  First of all, there was too much screaming.  Screaming, screaming, screaming, all the damn time.

Second of all was the swearing.  Sure the fuck-word is awesome but when it's just repeated ad-nauseum without any creativity, it becomes offensively dull and a lame attempt at shock.  Which is more fun?  "Fuck! What the fuck is fucking going on, fuck?" or "Fuckity damn, what in the name of the fuck motel is going the fick fack on, Johnny Wong?"  Hobo opts for the former; I've pulled the latter out of my ass.

And finally there's the lack of politics.  In a good exploitation movie there's got to be some kind of message, however suspect.  Even Street Trash, Hobo's cinematic siamese twin managed a vague message around 'treat Vietnam veterans right of they might encourage hobos to perform criminal acts out of their fear of sex vampires' and had characters you cared a little bit about.  Hobo, other than a lame attempt at 'street people are people too,' doesn't try too hard in the exploitative message that all exploitation films need.  There's not even a politically or socially relevant bad guy; he's just the nerdy loser from Lexx who is playing a live action version of The Raccoon's Cyril Sneer who runs an arcade and forces people at gun point to pretend they're in a reality show whenever he commits a public execution.

See?  It kind of sounds amazing and it pretty much is, however I've outgrown it.  Much to my sadness.  I'll check it out again any maybe I'll change my mind - I want to change my mind - but until I get around to watching FUBAR 2: Balls to the Wall, I'm a little disappointed with the state of Canadian cinema.