As you may have already learned via Uproxx email, FilmDrunk is co-presenting a series of screenings of Drafthouse Film’s Miami Connection as it karate kicks its way across the country, and it’s for this reason we were able to procure this exclusive For Your Consideration trailer. In case you don’t know, Miami Connection began as a rare 35 mm print of an obscure, 1987 film release bought for $50 on ebay, which was eventually rediscovered by Drafthouse Films and edited by Hobo with a Shotgun‘s Jason Eisner. It tells the story of 9th degree blackbelt YK Kim, leading his gang of synth-pop martial arts band Dragon Sound against drug-dealing motorcycle ninjas on the streets of Orlando. If that description doesn’t sound awesome to you, we probably can’t be friends.
This latest trailer is aimed specifically at the Academy voter, who’d be wise not to forget the name Maurice Smith when Best Actor nominating time comes around. I just like the whole scene that’s going on around him. Everyone’s either sleeveless or shirtless, there’s a picture of a rock star on the wall, one guy’s crying about a picture of his dead father – it’s like an Uproxx meeting with better haircuts.
Ouch, you guys, my soul hurts. I guess that’s just what happens when you watch a naked whore writhe in fresh corpse blood, a guy try to saw off a hooker’s head with a hacksaw, a man gingerly fondle his shotgun-blasted balls, and a pack of hyenas cut off a wildebeest’s penis and then make him eat it piece by piece while they rape his wife. I’m not sure that last one was even in the movie, or if I just imagined it because my mind is now so warped. I know the violence in Hobo with a Shotgun wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but at times it wasn’t so much clever or gleeful, just brutal, and borderline disturbing. But shouldn’t depictions of violence be disturbing, you might be asking, especially if you’re some kind of overeducated, close-reading psychobabbler? I suppose it should, if you’re trying to make a comment on violence, but in a comical faux-exploitation film it doesn’t quite play. If the sex and violence and swearing in these Grindhousey movies feels so good because it’s so wrong, like a dead-baby joke, or your sister’s tittie, it’s still easier to enjoy when it doesn’t make you feel like a sadist. The gore was a little excessive in Hobo with a Shotgun. Not enough to make or break the movie for me, but I dread the inevitable Pollyannical, conflatulent screed from Armond White, on the topic of this generation’s despicable delectation for endless decapitation. He won’t be right, but the ammo’s there.
be a real shotgun. I’ve got video of that below, but this was the exchange:
