When this film started I was impressed. Rutger as the Hobo sits on a train going through the American countryside with a cool retro song in the background. He jumps the train and arrives at a town smoking from a distance, welcome to Hell. This is going to be cool I thought.
I was totally wrong I'm afraid. The scenes after are supposed to be shocking I guess. A bumfight being filmed, then a gangsters brother gets decapitated in the middle of a shocked crowd, the villains of the piece are cardboard cut outs really. Shouting and mangling their faces and spitting out dreary dialogue. These scenes may have been shocking in the right hands. Unfortunately the director is not up to handling a movie with this title. Throwing lots of blood and guts around in front of a camera does not make you a director. Building tension, making characters worth caring about, creating entertainment or even snappy funny dialogue can help, but HWAS has none of these qualities.
I love a bit of bad taste and blood and guts but I felt this was bad taste for the sake of it, bad taste with no class to go with it and in the end the effect comes across really dull. Lighting effects switch to extreme reds or greens (Natural Born Killers style) or the camera tilts heavily to the side, or is set at a really low angle to accentuate I suppose the throwback nature of the film but only serves to highlight the amateurish decisions by the director.
A film with a really cool title should have been a funny, out there, gory (at the right moments) and trashy fun film. I had no fun watching this.
I was totally wrong I'm afraid. The scenes after are supposed to be shocking I guess. A bumfight being filmed, then a gangsters brother gets decapitated in the middle of a shocked crowd, the villains of the piece are cardboard cut outs really. Shouting and mangling their faces and spitting out dreary dialogue. These scenes may have been shocking in the right hands. Unfortunately the director is not up to handling a movie with this title. Throwing lots of blood and guts around in front of a camera does not make you a director. Building tension, making characters worth caring about, creating entertainment or even snappy funny dialogue can help, but HWAS has none of these qualities.
I love a bit of bad taste and blood and guts but I felt this was bad taste for the sake of it, bad taste with no class to go with it and in the end the effect comes across really dull. Lighting effects switch to extreme reds or greens (Natural Born Killers style) or the camera tilts heavily to the side, or is set at a really low angle to accentuate I suppose the throwback nature of the film but only serves to highlight the amateurish decisions by the director.
A film with a really cool title should have been a funny, out there, gory (at the right moments) and trashy fun film. I had no fun watching this.