This weird experimental Japanese movie is not only a homage to the gangster movies of the last three decades but also a tribute to the surreal cinema. The movie has many original characters, scenes and quotes to become a unique cult movie.

The story itself explains already quite well the experimental style of the movie and its weird uniqueness. A young Yakuza is torn in between his crazy friend and partner who once saved his life and who now wants to rebel against the inner structures of the Yakuza on one side and the boss of his gang that wants him to kill his old partner gone crazy on the other side. When the young Yakuza is on his way with his partner to finally kill him in an isolated place, his betrayed partner suddenly disappears without a trace when the young and naive Yakuza leaves him alone for a few moments to order some lunch in a strange restaurant. He has to go on a strange journey to find his friend - either to ultimately kill him and satisfy his severe and pervert boss or to ally with him and try to break free. On his way, he meets weird transvestites in a restaurant, a pervert female hotel manager, a weird man with a scarface that seems to know more than he pretends, a strange young woman that pretends to be the reincarnation of the disappeared Yakuza partner and a mysterious cow demon that seems to reign over the suburbs of a city where the madness reigns.

The film impresses with strange, unreal and yet unique and touching characters, a couple of truly bizarre events and an unexpected conclusion that you won't soon forget and that may rather develop further questions instead of answering the essential ones. I watched many scenes of the movie several times and tried to understand and analyze and developed my own theory. The great thing is that many plausible solutions can be found as I read on the internet which is a fact that distinguishes this Japanese masterpiece from many other movies of this kind that don't want the viewers to understand, offer unnecessary side stories and try to distract the viewers from reality to mix them up and make the movie an unreachable diva. This movie here is strange but addicting, attracting and relatively easy to follow. It unites detailed complexity and relative simplicity in a perfect way. It has also rather fast development for an Asian movie of that kind and gets you quickly into the complex story.

I think that the movie is more interesting for fans of surreal and twisted film experiments but it's one of the more accessible or commercial movies of this kind and could be a great introduction to someone that would like to get a good idea of that genre. In fact, I would recommend this movie to anybody that likes epic and surprising road movies. Anybody that expects another entertaining gangster movie from Takashi Miike may be surprised by this unusual style and should check a trailer out before purchasing this movie. There is not a lot of action and tension in the movie but a lot of dark humour, mystery, mild horror as well as sex and violence as the film progresses.

It's a shame that this movie didn't get the attention it would have deserved. Michel Rodde delivers us a slow development of a gripping drama that turns into a psychological thriller.

The main actors coming from France and Quebec convince and get a great and detailed development throughout the movie after a somewhat mellow start. Especially Rémy Girard seems to get better every year and delivers the best job of his life in here. Laurent Lucas is a promising young French actor that I didn't know before and his performance inspires me to keep an eye on him and check out his other projects. But even the secondary characters are all detailed, profound and important for the development of the movie and there is not one single unnecessary scene if you analyze this movie after knowing its unusual ending.

The movie is filled with interesting relationships and connections. The movie has many subtle details that lead to a stunning twisted ending that leaves many questions open and makes us think, interpret and analyze a lot. The last thirty minutes or so are filled with many surprises and have a much faster vibe than the slow first two thirds of the movie which makes me think of many great psychological thrillers. Now for the story itself, this one is authentic and one can easy identify with the characters which is one of the strongest points of the movie that distinguishes this small masterpiece from other flicks of its genre.

In the end, I am happy to have stumbled over this flick. I thought I would get some solid entertainment and a mixture of a drama and a suspense movie but this film got me by surprise and after some doubts in the beginning I realized I discovered a great gem, a little masterpiece, a true treasure and I want to share my thoughts with the community and suggest any fan of surprising suspense movies and gripping dramas to check this underrated movie out at all costs. It's worth your time, patience and money and you won't soon forget this.

Hobo with a Shotgun is a great comeback for the charismatic actor Rutger Hauer that has played in many well known classics of modern cinema such as Blade Runner, Ladyhawke and The Hitcher. He plays the role of a merciless and yet very philosophic, melancholic and warm heartened homeless that gets in conflict with a whole corrupted city where violence and crime reign when he tries to save the life of a prostitute.

This low budget b-movie has the potential to become a true cult movie. It has some philosophical and introspective parts and presents an exaggerated criticism of modern society. The acting is quite strong and credible even though the movie works a lot with extremes and stereotypical or exaggerated events which give the whole flick an almost "dystopian" or at least abstract and surreal touch.

But the main focus of the movie lies on the vengeance story that leads to many harsh dialogues with memorable bad language quotes and a lot of bloody execution scenes. There is a lot of blood and gore in this movie and this is nothing for weak stomaches. Thanks to a lot of dark humour and a lot of exaggerating moments, the whole thing doesn't get too heavy to disturb most of the viewers but the main characters are credible and profound enough to connect the viewers to them. The movie finds just the right middle way here and is easy to digest without being too superficial and simplistic. Of course, the story is short, sweet and simple and we should not expect any twists, surprises or innovating moments but the potential cult factor is so elevated that we don't need those things to make this flick stay in our minds. The movie generally feels like an experimental hack and slash movie with a contemporary Asian style that can also be found in the latest works of Quentin Tarantino for example.

If you like rude and bloody vengeance movies with some memorable scenes and quote, this movie here is your highlight of the year. If you are a fan of Rutger Hauer, you will witness his strongest performance in years and a great unexpected comeback. If you look for an entertaining short and sweet b-movie that is not too flat to be one movie amongst many others but not too commercial to lose its rude charm, you can't go wrong with this at all.

You should only avoid this if you expect a well thought and twisted vengeance story. You may find better stuff in the contemporary Asian cinema with movies such as "Oldboy", "Mother" or "I saw the devil".

This movie really is about the sense of humour and another unique cinematic gem coming from Québec. It's really hard to make me laugh but this movie almost permanently put at least a little smile on my face. When I wasn't laughing I was stunned by the soft dramatic, romantic and philosophic content of the movie, the surprisingly credible and great acting, the majestic and unique landscapes or the great exploitation of Quebec's culture and language or simply the little twist in the very end.

The story is already rather original: A little and usually rather shy cook and outsider controlled by his dominant father and mobbed by the community goes to a comedy show with two comedians to change his mind but they chose him as victim and start making jokes about him in front of the entire public. The same evening, the cook takes revenge, kidnaps the two comedians and hides them in his farm. The two comedians try to win his confidence and offer him to fight the mobbing and become the star of the small and beautiful village and community. They offer him to discover his sense of humour and fight his inner demons. They want to help him becoming himself. After a few problems, mistakes and misadventures, the cook gets more and more confident and tries at the same time to impress the love of his life. But the story ends not here: How will the severe father react as he discovers the truth about what his son is doing in his back? What will he ultimately happen with the two comedians that may try to escape and call the police? How will the cook react as the police and family members of the comedians keep on looking for the truth?

Every character in this movie has a funny and rather superficial but also a profound and touching side. For the first time ever, Louis-José Houde made an excellent job and really lives his character for me. I didn't like him as a comedian and always thought that he pulled some interesting comedy movies like "Father and guns" down or played stupid and unnecessary cameo roles like in Quebec's modern action comedy masterpiece "Bon cop, bad cop". With this movie, Louis-José Houde finally convinces me and doesn't play a childish guy that is simply talking all the time but a matured and diversified character that fits him well. Benoît Brière who was rather unknown to me is a good partner in crime and has a different sense of humour which equilibrates the choice of actors in a positive way. Michel Côté shines as always and plays an insightful, solitaire and desperate psychopath. One really sees and feels that he has more experience than the other actors and uses charisma in a great way to live his character. But even most of the secondary roles who play the psychopath's father and the comedian's sister or wife fill their characters with life, creativity and authenticity and there are mostly no random one dimensional characters to find here.

The only little negative point to find is that the ending is rather predictable and also filled with the usual stereotypical scenes and that a few of the secondary actors could have merit a little bit more development as they are really less intriguing than the three main characters and their direct surroundings.

But a part of this little fact, this interesting comedy movie from Québec easily beats the well sounding names on the big screens of this cinematic summer right now and is a unique and highly entertaining movie with a great acting. It has been a long time that I haven't laughed as much as in this film and I'm looking forward for more movies coming from Quebec this year after a phenomenal and successful last year.

This is now already the fifth part of my little review series: Movies that are way better than you expect.

When I bought this movie at a low price a couple of days ago I expected some entertaining gore horror movie and the short length of only seventy-six minutes seemed to underline my expectations. What I discovered is a fast paced diversified thriller with many surprises that I didn't see coming at all.

In only five minutes or so the director introduces a complicate family drama to us: The young main actor that wants to finally start a new life with his pregnant girlfriend in a city, his girlfriend itself who is torn between her family and their enterprise and the love of her life, her egoist father who secretly worked with pesticides and is constantly in search for further power, his ex-wife who helped him with his conspiracies and still takes a big place in his life, the father's grim brother that feels exploited by him, their father who suffers a strange disease and feels the dark shadows coming over the family - they are all part of the following race and when they go out for a hunt, they become not only the prey of some strange boars that have gone wild but also each other's prey. Jealousy, pride and egoism lead to many surprising and radical scenes and the dramatic turns of events all seem to liberate the worst in each of them. A quite simple plot turns into a haunting and surprising story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

It's incredible that the director had the time to introduce half of a dozen profound and diversified characters to the movie and mix the horror hunt with influences from the drama and psychological suspense genre and that's what makes this movie so unique and worthwhile. You will quickly realize that the movie focuses on the monsters in the human soul and not that much on some pigs gone crazy even if that aspect is also explained in a credible way. The hunting story itself includes a dark atmosphere, some gripping survival horror parts with a couple of good ideas and some gore scenes that are not too exaggerated and fit well to the general atmosphere and the character's extreme changes. The special effects are not outstanding but done in a truly solid and credible way in comparison to many other low or no budget horror flicks that show too many artificial and unreal monsters and quickly turn me off. The good camera work and the well done soundtrack are other positive points that make this movie one of the best of its kind and a little unexpected masterpiece gem.

In the end, you should not expect anything revolutionary but in its genre and for what it is supposed to be, this movie really left a deep and permanent impression and I will surely watch it a few times again. Make sure to check this underestimated French horror flick out in your local video shop.