Vigilante Double Feature Review

Of mainstream sources it would appear to get a decent action film, I’d advise to scourge deeper into more exploitive tastes. A rise in ultra-violent vigilante justice genre has peeked recently: here are the latest two that stood out as the style and substance.

 “Jerk on this, you child-molesting shit-licker!”

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011):

Originally a fake trailer for the Grindhouse phenomena. This one I feel is potentially the best of them all.  Combining an urban setting, anarchist theme to a pseudo-future of gang warfare - Class Of 84’, Combat Shock and Escape From L.A. spring to mind. 


While I liked all the Grindhouse films albeit Machete which worked better as a trailer. I can mention a couple of things I didn’t like from each. Hobo With A Shotgun didn’t miss a beat with me and worked the best as an actual stand-alone movie and has created a strong reputation in underground crowds completely separating itself from Grindhouse and became a league of its own. It wasn’t as well critical received as the others however, for what reason I can only assume is because this film is right proper trashy at times however the level of bad taste is brilliant for people who understand shit about things.

Rutger Hauer (The Hobo) must be one of the most badass grandpa’s this side of Gran Torino, nothing cleans the streets better than that old school ass-kicking. His main rivals are the “Princes of Fuck Town” the mafia bosses son’s, they enjoy hooker stomping, test your strength hammers (and human piñatas), flaming school buses and “skate rape.”It would be a shame to not to mention, The Plague. The cyberpunk evil twin brothers of Daft Punk. Who with only a small amount of screen time (due to the effortlessness in which they kill), deserve a spin-off themselves.

Hobo With A Shotgun is the style of this double feature and easily the video nasty of the two. For a taste check out ‘Treevenge’ one of the director,  Jason Eisener's earlier works.

Super (2010):

James Gunn’s aptly named Super at first appears to be a Kick-Ass knock-off; a B-mimic of a half-decent parody. Luckily the film was is surprisingly good and all prior suspicions were resolved, in fact it’s probably better than Kick-Ass (less teenager-y bullshit.) If Batman Begins was considered a realistic portrayal of superheroes - meet The Crimson Bolt.

Frank is a docile, innocent - somewhat socially inept – man child. His life involves his ex-addict wife, his co-workers and his fleeting attempts to remember his good times. Cliché? I guess, but it makes up for it in being relatively and strangely accurate look at humanity. Liv Tyler plays Franks wife, and while many would consider her to be out of his league, she comes from a bad past and sees him as perhaps the only non-dangerous man she has ever met. However, Frank’s wife now depressed living with boring Frank for so many years has left him for a local drug lord (Kevin Bacon). Through a flashback we see Frank’s wife profess that only he “can save her from addiction.” Such begins The Crimson Bolt.

A superhero who resembles Burnt Face Man, with lines such as “Shut Up, Crime!” Which gives it that indie cred filmmaking the critics love. Of course the news becomes involved and Frank starts using The Crimson Bolt for his own personal power control – a skull is cracked open over a cutter in the cinema line. See this, human nature stuff coming out, yeah?

Starstruck comic-book girl (Ellen Page) demands to join him, as the sidekick, Boltie. I would say her part in the film isn’t completely necessary if it weren’t for a scene in which Boltie’s failed seduction of Frank, leads to her raping him, at this point I felt a review is necessary.

The climax is bloody (hilarious that is) when we see the extent of what violence is out-side the comic book realm, quite... violent. This also fits into the ‘anarchy is freedom idolisation’ films like: Dear Wendy or Bellflower, shot independant style until eruptions of ‘full-life concequence’ leads to violence. It’s here the effect of Super got it a higher content rating than Kick-Ass, which is unfair, but the makers may like it that way. It’ll gain a good fanbase of people who seeked it out, not of teenagers who went to the cinemas looking for bullets, blood and boobs.

I’m finding the works of James Gunn more and more interesting. See the internet series PG-Porn(2008). It's also nice seeing Rainn Wilson in more quality ventures than Dwight (The Office), see Hesher (2010). Ellen Page returning to her darkest role since Hard Candy (2005). While comedic and very fun it is simultaneously dark, creating what could have been very dumb into something much more complex - this is the substance. 


In conclusion, I feared the death of action films had forever succumb to mind-numbing CGI, luckily some vigilante filmmakers can still fuel my need for gratuitous violence with smooth visuals and if possible, an inspired storyline. Fight the power, boys.