Hobo With A Shotgun, as with Machete, stems from a fake trailer created for Grindhouse, the double-feature homage to exploitation films of the 50s and 60s, by Tarantino and Rodriguez.Having been a big fan of these earlier examples, I’ve been looking forward to Hobo since it was unveiled, much earlier in the year. After all, there’s a hobo. With a shotgun. How could this possibly not result in entertainment? Unfortunately, this is a very different slice of cinema and those hoping for the self-aware humour and skilful touches of these previous titles will be sorely disappointed.

The film begins with Rutger Hauer, the hobo of the title, alighting from a train near Hopetown, or Scumtown, as its welcome sign has been cleverly retagged. Entering the city, he finds it beset by degeneracy; videotaped violence and petty crime. In quick order he meets Drake, the local criminal overlord, and his sons Slick and Ivan. They attack and kill Drake’s brother, Logan, in front of a terrified populace, dropping him down a manhole and tearing his head off. It’s the first of many hyper-violent set-pieces the film has to offer.

This scene sets the tone of things to come. It’s cartoonishly violent, terribly over-acted, drags on too long and lacks any real sense of fun. It’s this last one that really kills the film. Everything is so ridiculously over the top that Hobo desperately needs a sense of humour to rise above its own stupidity, which is what Machete did so well. Instead, it takes itself painfully seriously, going so far as to attempt social commentary (the homeless are people too, man…) and it all ends up a little dull. Well, more than a little, to be perfectly honest.

The plot hits the standard points you might expect. Hooker with a heart of gold. Corrupt police. Unrealised dreams. The giant gaping wounds a shotgun leaves from close range… It’s all appropriately ridiculous, but it’s just not very well executed.

As I said, I was really looking forward to Hobo, but there’s nothing I can latch on to here to recommend the movie. It’s shot unconvincingly, with the background looking gritty and violent in one scene and then full of suburban bonhomie in the next. The overacting isn’t fun, or hammy, it mostly just consists of people yelling VERY LOUDLY. Though in their defence, they may have just been trying to be heard over the sound effects. I suppose some of the kill scenes are well constructed, but without anything approaching likeable characters, or viable plot, I couldn’t even get too excited about those.

Hobo With A Shotgun owes far more to recent Japanese cinema than it does to the older American films payed homage to in Grindhouse and those fond of the works of Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police, etc) may find more to like here. There’s not the weird surrealism of those pieces, but heads are removed in geysers of blood, razor-lined baseball bats are used to disembowel, ice skates are used with bloody and athletic vigour and shotguns rip people apart as vengeance is taken by all involved. It’s definitely one of the bloodiest films released in a while and for some, this may be enough to make it an enjoyable excursion.

In the end, the film is boring, and that’s the kiss of death for a genre piece like this. I can live with bad acting. I can enjoy a silly plot. But if you’ve got nothing to offer beyond those, then frankly, you have nothing to offer.