"When life gives you razor blades, you get a baseball bat, and you cover it in razor blades"

I figured Hobo with a Shotgun to be many things – tongue-in-cheek, gory, nutty, over-the-top, etc. And it was, but it somehow wound up being something more than that, too – taking me to a way darker place than anticipated. Last year’s iteration of the postmodern grindhouse ethos, Machete, just missed making my 2010 Top Ten List, but for all its mania and gore it was, at heart, a wish fulfillment fantasy – a hilarious and exciting candy-colored fantasia of violence as a kid might imagine it, with a bit of extra long intestine added in. That’s basically what I thought Hobo with a Shotgun might be.

Hauer vs. Statham: A Tale of Two Killing Machines

So this week’s been all about action movie icons for me at Vulture, where I did a slideshow/interview with Rutger Hauer about thirteen of his most memorable parts, and then a slideshow of the 16 worst ways to be killed by Jason Statham. I’m quite proud of both pieces. They were written at different times, but it’s kind of fitting that they ran back to back. Considering these two actors together, one notices some interesting things.