HALIFAX - Civilians with shotguns. Crooked cops. Blood and guts galore. It sounds like your typical Quentin Tarantino film, with a Canadian twist, and Hobo with a Shotgun was one of the sell-outs out late-night screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
Rob Cotterill produced the Halifax based film, which stars Rutger Hauer. "It's a vigilante exploitation…it's extreme, it's violent, it's bloody but it's also really funny and it's got a heart of gold that runs through it."
The film, a thriller influenced by western movies, tells the story of a homeless man in search of a fresh start in a new town. Instead, he finds a city riddled with crime and chaos.
Hobo premiered last Friday at Sundance and the crowd went wild.
"There was a lot of love in the room…the crowd went off and they screamed and they yelled and they cheered in all the right moments," says Cotterill. "We were…very excited about how it went down."
Cotterill first met film director Jason Eisener on the set of the Trailer Park Boys.
In 2007 they teamed with writer John Davies to produce a short, trailer version of Hobo. They entered it in an international contest and won. The prize? It screened as part of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's 2007 flick, Grindhouse.
"We won that competition which gave us the opportunity to get attention and get to make the movie," Cotterill tells CTV News.
They started filming the feature-length version last spring, casting prolific Dutch actor Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, Sin City), as the lead. It's full of east coast flavour, however, featuring many local actors and having been shot entirely around Halifax and Dartmouth.
"We always wanted to shoot and make the film here. It's our hometown…it's where our people are. We have the support of all the crew that we know and love here."
This is Cotterill's second film to be shown at Sundance. He and Eisener produced a short film, Treevenge, which garnered an honourable mention at the international film festival in 2009. Hobo is their first full-length feature film to be screened and Cotterill is excited about the exposure.
"It means a lot for any Canadian film to show at Sundance…probably the biggest indie film festival in the world," says Cotterill. "You get all kinds of studio people there watching your movies and you get a massive amount of industry talking about your film."
The final screening takes place tonight at midnight. Cotterill wishes he could be there, but it's back to business as usual as he begins work on a new project, an untitled martial arts film.
"We like to take a genre and turn it on its head. We're going to try to make it something fun."
