Hi, Mom! 4K 1970 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

John Rubin lands a job filming a pornographic movie with a hidden camera. The twist is that John himself is supposed to be the star of the orgy. This sparks an acting talent within him that will help John get rid of his shrewish wife.

Review 4K Movie

The sequel to John Rubin’s adventures turned out to be more subdued. In the first film of this duology (*Greetings*), De Palma touched on too many topics—politics, pornography, conspiracy theories, and Hitchcock. And that absurd mix actually worked. The film turned out to be just the right amount of ironic and just the right amount of edgy. 'Hello, Mom!' apparently used the same blueprint.

A young man, who, as you might guess, has recently returned from the Vietnam War, is forced to rebuild his life. And in the big city—chaos. Chaos in people’s minds, too. Our hero decides to use his pastime of spying on his neighbors for commercial purposes and continues (as in ‘Greetings’) to shoot pornography. And from there, it’s just one step to social activism.

And here, De Palma takes a slight detour from his first film. Instead of conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s death, he adds the theme of racial segregation to the mix. “Be an African American for a Day, Baby”—that’s exactly the kind of underground show John Rubin is trying to put on, forcing people who consider themselves middle class to feel powerless.

This show, woven into the main narrative, seems to remain the primary and only social commentary. At the same time, our hero isn’t particularly bothered by this theme. Inequality is merely a pretext for defiance, protest, and an explosion. However, there’s no getting around the explosion here.

In the finale, De Palma once again reduces all of the protagonist’s quests, his personal rebellion and anxieties, to purely psychological questions. It is clear that this is about the human psyche’s reaction to responsibility.

The director’s style is marked by a certain disjointedness, stream of consciousness, and excessively vivid visual imagery, bordering on the grotesque. And when discussing this film strictly within the context of De Palma’s body of work, one can easily find parallels with such later films as *The Puncture* and *The Body*, 'Bonfire of the Vanities' and ‘Home Movies.’ And many of Robert De Niro’s close-ups are worth noting—even back then, the actor was already performing at a high level.

As for the assessment, the film, when inevitably compared to ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ looks less appealing. There are fewer plot twists here, and only a few memorable moments as well... Yet, viewed in isolation from ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ the film might even seem like a lackluster ‘New Wave’-style experiment