what can I do when the hood release doesn't work?

I love these kind of questions because it turns me into the a psychic mechanic, do to your failure to be specific on exactly what happened, so now I will put my psychic ability to work, I'm assuming the cable was broken, the question where is, if it was just a handle inside the cab, take a pair of pliers and pull the cable, if the cable broke at the lack underneath the hood you will need to take a long screwdriver poke it through the grill and manually activate the latch.