“Citizen Vigilante” Review
Director: Uwe Boll Screenwriter: Uwe Boll Cast: Armie Hammer, Costas Mandylor Distributor: Quiver Distribution Running Time: 89 min. MPAA: Not Rated
To watch Citizen Vigilante is to stare into the abyss of the right-wing losers. The disgrace of Armie Hammer, the horrendous filmmaking of Uwe Boll, and the vile politics of racist conservatives have all festered to form this rotten movie as ill-thought as it is horrifically offensive. For the middle-aged white guy banned from his favorite bar and distanced by his family for his grotesque politics, this is likely the revenge movie they’ll favor most, where the bigoted man who targets people of color is not the villain or the anti-hero; just the hero. A hero that could only exist in the most farcical of conservative revenge fantasies.
The only way to root for the vigilante killings committed by the protagonist is to fully buy into his limited worldview and unlikable personality. Armie Hammer plays Michael Sanders, an ex-soldier who inherits his father’s real estate business and does a poor job of running it personally. He bitterly steps into his offices to deny housing to migrants and tell his staff that they’re too old. If the film began here, there’d be something to build on, with Sanders learning to run his business better and to understand the plight of immigrants in his nameless European country, of which he is not a citizen, despite the movie’s title and the character’s politics. But this is not a movie about character growth. This is a movie where a hideous person can declare “I’m not racist, I’m just honest,” and every white person around him nods in agreement through the magic of conservative-brained writing.
Angered by “Europe” having too many migrants committing crimes and never being prosecuted the way he’d like, Sanders takes on the role of a vigilante who gets revenge on those raped and/or murdered by migrants. His actions are never condemned online because the movie only shows us the social media feed of those praising his violent actions. It’s no surprise that the only time we see somebody looking at this social media is Sanders himself, so satisfied with his efforts, I’m surprised he didn’t start masturbating in between tapping Like. Trust me, that’s not too absurd for a character like this. Hammer’s performance is awful, but he’s working with a terrible script. This is a character who gets mad at young punks who don’t pay their fare for the bus and proceeds to give them a lecture on shoplifting that is so dumb I’m surprised nobody laughed at him making this corny monologue. This is a man who has a dull sex scene with a prostitute and then interrupts the act to comment on the mold on her walls, because he just can’t stop being a scummy landlord.
The only criticism Sanders receives comes from the Interpol agent Henry (Costas Mandylor), a man committed to his job even though nobody seems to appreciate his efforts to bring in the vigilante. EVERYBODY despises him, including a random bar waitress. When Henry says, rather calmly, that he’s only trying to preserve some sense of justice so the world doesn’t descend into chaos, the waitress retorts, “Who cares?” A better film might’ve highlighted the nihilism that Henry is encountering with a public willing to support such criminal actions that get people killed, but not this movie. You’re not meant to sympathize with Henry’s plight. He’s the antagonist you’re supposed to boo. You’re supposed to be on the side of nihilism in this trashy picture.
And, wow, is it garbage. Uwe Boll was never a good director, but he’s at his worst with this picture. For an action movie under 90 minutes, this movie is a tedious slog. The scene where Interpol agents descend on Sanders’ estate is one of the most boring because it becomes so drawn out. Many minutes are wasted showing how Interpol transports navigate through traffic. After the many camera angles of obeying traffic laws, we get longer scenes of agents filing out of the transports, readying their weapons, ascending the estate’s stairs, setting explosives to blow open doors, and moving through the mostly empty estate until they find Sanders. And even when Sanders meets them with a barrage of automatic weapons and explosives, these scenes of brutality are also played out in slow motion, with cheap effects and hardly an ounce of tension.
In addition to being poorly paced, the film is also a mess of ill-fitting edits within a non-linear narrative. This film jumps all around the place, and there’s very little to define each moment in the timeline. Not that it matters. The story shows no character growth aside from Henry, who is convinced that Sanders is right over the course of a single phone call at the end of the movie. I’m assuming Boll thought the film would be more intriguing if he shuffled his lifeless drivel, but it only makes the movie feel more like a skipping record than a compelling tapestry. There’s no excitement when the puzzle being assembled here is that Sanders kills some migrant rapists, kills some Interpol agents, and never answers for his crimes.
Citizen Vigilante is a boring, bile-inducing dose of right-wing propaganda, built by and for failures. There is nothing to like about this movie, with its poorly edited assembly and out-of-touch script that unironically has the hero blaming the world’s ills on “a blindsided woke left.” The most laughable part of this deeply hateful movie comes at the end with a dedication to “the thousands of rape and murder victims in Europe who were betrayed by our legal system.” Be real; Boll doesn’t care about these issues and just wants to say the quiet part real loud, considering how little he engages with the European legal system, immigrant issues, and socioeconomic factors beyond cartoonish reductions. This is not a movie for people deeply concerned about systemic problems. This is for the white guy tired of being criticized and mocked for spouting right-wing falsehoods that make him sound like the villain. In this movie, that guy is the hero, but it’s a fantasy that won’t last, as this conservative revenge fantasy quickly falls into the pit of other right-wing movies that were once labeled as “sticking it to woke Hollywood” and were never heard from again. May Citizen Vigilante be buried quickly, lest it festers into manifestos of the many white guys who want an excuse to be more racist and violent.
