Analyzing Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante

Analyzing the new Uwe Boll movie Citizen Vigilante

Image Credit: Quiver Distribution

Citizen Vigilante, the new low-budget genre movie written and directed by the great/infamous Dr. Uwe Boll and recently released by Quiver Distribution to various Video On Demand streaming platforms (the movie also received some sort of limited theatrical release), is absolutely terrible. I know that isn’t much of a revelation considering who made it, as Boll is notorious for making less than stellar movies. Sure, he’s made a few movies that I would call mildly entertaining and watchable, like the first Rampage (2009) movie he did, as well as BloodRayne (2005) and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007). Everything else that I’ve seen from Boll has been varying degrees of horrendous. And Citizen Vigilante is a horrendous movie. On top of being badly directed and dreadfully boring, it’s also openly and proudly racist, which makes its very existence morally repugnant. And when you realize that Boll seems to think that the movie he’s made is a serious examination of any social or political question when it isn’t any of those things at all, it just makes the experience of watching Citizen Vigilante nothing short of dreadful.

Citizen Vigilante stars Armie Hammer as Sanders, a rich American/ex-military of some sort that owns and manages multiple properties and businesses and whatnot he inherited from his dead father in “Europe” (we’re not told it takes place in any specific European country, it just takes place in “Europe”) who decides to start murdering people that he sees as essentially responsible for all of the crime in “Europe.” We see Sanders attack, maim, and kill non-white young people, non-white organized crime figures, a white judge that he deems responsible for enabling non-white criminals to commit crimes, and, eventually, a brown skinned Muslim family and an assortment of other brown skinned people that were involved in the rape of a young white woman. Sanders also kills an assortment of SWAT cops led by an Interpol cop named Henry and played by Costas Mandylor (Costas manages to survive the attack on his SWAT cops but is horribly injured). And when Sanders isn’t just killing people, he’s complicit in sex trafficking (he pays for sex with a prostitute that works out of a brothel that operates out of a building that he owns), fires a bunch of old people that work for him because he’s not only a racist murderer but also a raging asshole, or he’s working out and fondling a bunch of weapons on a table. And when he isn’t doing all of that, he’s making “talk directly to the camera” videos where he explains his racist crusade and hopes to inspire white “European” people to join him in his racist crusade (one of these videos ends up being broadcast all across “Europe” at the very end of the movie via, I assume, a cable news channel). That, basically, is Citizen Vigilante.

If you go on social media looking for advocates for the movie (and you will find them), you will see that the movie is attracting praise from some of the worst people imaginable. Twitter is filled with proudly and openly racist accounts promoting Citizen Vigilante because the movie is proudly and openly racist. These accounts are filled with glee that “someone has finally made a ‘real movie’ that expresses what we believe.” They all adore the Muslim family massacre scene, as well as the scene early in the movie where Sanders explains “a rules based society” while paying for the bus fare for a threesome of young people that didn’t pay their fares. Because, in their sick minds, that’s what Citizen Vigilante is really about. The evil, brown skinned Muslim migrants that the woke Leftist judges and politicians “no one voted for” have allowed to run rampant need to be deported and or killed because they are not compatible with real “European” values. Of course, if you stop and think about that sentiment for more than a second, you realize that it’s just complete nonsense, but then the people that believe this horseshit and are going to support this movie’s message aren’t interested in reality. This movie, like the racist movements that have informed it, are all about outrage, fomenting outrage, and keeping that outrage going. Again, the second you start thinking about any of it, the whole racist structure of the plot falls apart. And if it falls apart, you won’t want to kill the evil brown skinned Muslim migrants. “Europe” didn’t have crime before the brown skinned Muslim migrants migrated? Women weren’t raped by men “for wearing revealing clothing” before the brown skinned Muslim migrants migrated? All of that’s obviously absurd, but that’s what the movie wants you to believe.

You will also likely find some supporters online that are fans of the movie because they think that Citizen Vigilante isn’t what it appears to be and is somehow a more nuanced and complicated movie, that Boll is engaging in some sort of sophisticated trolling on hardcore right-wing racist dipshits. They will talk about how Hammer’s Sanders is not “European” and that Sanders is in “Europe” illegally, and because of all of that you can’t take the movie’s message at face value. Those details would be interesting and almost fascinating if the movie dealt with them at all beyond mentioning them in passing. But those details are not what the movie is about. The movie is meant to be openly and proudly racist, that white “Europeans” need to start deporting and or killing brown skinned migrants and their “enablers,” and it really isn’t any deeper than that. It just isn’t.

I suspect that, over the next few weeks, you will also start to find people who will want to argue that it doesn’t really matter what the movie is actually advocating, that the movie is an example of Boll being a “good” exploitation movie producer and director, deliberately making something that would generate controversy simply for existing and exploiting an ongoing public fear (that’s what the Big Chuck Bronson Death Wish movies did, as well as the Dirty Harry movies!) and that’s cool and something to admire. And isn’t Boll a bold and brave filmmaker for making Citizen Vigilante (Roger Avary apparently loves it)? I would argue that, sure, you should be allowed to make whatever kind of movie that you want to, but, at the same time, just because you can make a certain kind of movie doesn’t mean that you should. The world doesn’t need an openly and proudly racist movie. And Boll isn’t being brave at all. He’s just making another terrible movie. The only thing that’s mildly admirable about Boll is that he manages to keep finding money to make movies, but that mild admiration has serious limits. Serious, serious limits.

Now, before someone accuses me of being for censorship, I want to address the whole “the movie has been banned in Germany” thing. Banning Citizen Vigilante anywhere and for any reason is not a good idea and wrong. Despite its beyond horrible message, Citizen Vigilante is not a dangerous movie (it just doesn’t deserve that kind of attention). I also seriously doubt that Citizen Vigilante is going to “inspire real life violence.” I will say that I will not be surprised if we start seeing hardcore right-wing racist dipshits dressing up like the character played by Armie Hammer to try to get a rise out of people (Halloween this year will be interesting on that front). But that kind of stunt probably won’t generate the sort of response those hardcore right-wing racist dipshits will want, as the audience for Citizen Vigilante isn’t likely to be all that big in the end and not enough people will know what the hell those hardcore right-wing dipshits are going on about, so they will stop after a while. And, no, there will be no moment in the near or distant future where Citizen Vigilante is somehow “cool.” The movie is too stupid and awful and terrible to generate that kind of devotion beyond the hardcore right-wing dipshits that desperately want to make it a thing. The only thing the general movie watching public should do about Citizen Vigilante is what it’s doing now and will continue to do into the future: have no idea that it exists, and if and when they do they will hate it because it’s just terrible.

And, no, “Hollywood” isn’t trying to prevent you from seeing Citizen Vigilante. That’s just a tried and true exploitation movie advertising scheme. It’s bullshit. Quiver Distribution, which is a part of “Hollywood,” wouldn’t have agreed to distribute the movie if “Hollywood” didn’t want you to see it. Use your goddamn head.

As for Armie Hammer and whether or not this movie will hinder any attempt at a major Hollywood comeback, I don’t think it’s going to have any effect on that happening one way or another. Again, I don’t think the audience for this movie is going to be all that big, so who in big deal Hollywood will know Hammer was even in it? Hammer’s sexual assault and “cannibalism” allegations from years ago are more likely to keep him out of Hollywood than appearing in a Uwe Boll movie would (Hammer was never charged by authorities for anything due to a lack of evidence). Hammer could end up having a steady career in low-budget genre cinema as a result of this movie, although I don’t know if he’s going to want that (Boll will probably hire him again for whatever movie he does next). As for Boll, I guess there’s always a chance he tries to make more openly and proudly racist movies, or at least movies with a hardcore right wing bent, if Citizen Vigilante makes enough money (and who knows what “enough money” even means here). Will the racist audience he’s trying to cultivate want to stick around if he keeps making terrible yet racist movies? Only time will tell. I don’t think they will. I think whatever that audience is will eventually get bored with Boll’s output simply because his movies are never going to get any better or more coherent and they’re certainly not going to recruit people to the cause. In the end, I think the only thing Citizen Vigilante will inspire is audiences trying to find out if they can get their money back after watching Citizen Vigilante.

I think I’ve talked about Citizen Vigilante enough. I’ve given it far more attention and thought than it deserves. It’s yet another terrible movie from a moviemaker that is known/famous/infamous for making terrible movies. It’s also proudly racist garbage that will only appeal to the hardcore right wing racist audience that desperately wants it to be a cause. It won’t be. Avoid this movie. Citizen Vigilante fucking sucks.

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