{"id":648591,"date":"2026-06-20T08:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648591\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T08:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:02:17","slug":"citizen-vigilante-uwe-boll-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/648591\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Vigilante \u2014 Uwe Boll [Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before diving into any of the specific details of Citizen Vigilante, let\u2019s get straight into what the film actually is: racist, xenophobic, ethnocentrist, alt-right agitprop manufactured to piss off the \u201cwoke Left,\u201d which is exact language used at one point in the narrative. Bravo, Uwe Boll. Anders Breivik<\/a> would be proud.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Armie Hammer, fresh off Controversy Row (is he even allowed to leave?), portrays a stoic vigilante in a nondescript Eastern European setting. He hunts down people of color and migrant evildoers in the name of a \u201cjustice\u201d that victims of rape and assault were denied by the legal system. If you\u2019re skeptical that this reflects the film\u2019s actual narrative framework, don\u2019t worry: Citizen Vigilante \u2014 replete with nauseating camerawork, erratic editing, and atrocious dialogue \u2014 hammers into our skulls almost immediately that \u201cmigrant attacks are on the rise,\u201d so says a news anchor. You also aren\u2019t supposed to doubt that the mysterious European vigilante taking on \u201cthese criminals\u201d is a godsend, that \u201cwe need someone like him over here in America,\u201d at least according to a man on a TikTok-adjacent reel. And this sentiment does not waver, so strap in.<\/p>\n

The majority of Boll\u2019s latest film is, in fact, constructed like a talking-head documentary interspersed with current events coverage. Hammer, for some reason, periodically interrupts the action to dump exposition onto us, to expound on his background and motivations (slim and inane as they are), and to defend his unlawful acts of violence in the face of police interrogation. We\u2019re seemingly supposed to empathize with his character, who looks like a sociopathic killer cosplaying as a finance bro, and who executes an entire Muslim family in the film\u2019s conclusion. More on that in a moment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s painful to admit, but the white-supremacist polemics \u2014 in the form of mock newsreel, talking-head interviews, and even the faux-philosophical anonymous epitaphs in the film\u2019s opening credits \u2014 are the most fascinating thing to discuss in regard to Citizen Vigilante. These sequences are where the film is at its most vicious, despicable, and inexcusable. The cold open is no exception: we follow a mother and her child (Hammer\u2019s character as a young boy) grocery shopping, for what feels like an eternity. They finally check out, and while walking outside, the mother randomly gets approached by a Black man who stabs her in the neck. Cut to the sensationalist, fearmongering coverage about African migrants, rape and assault, spikes in violent crime. You name it.<\/p>\n

The rest of what fills out this film\u2019s runtime can be categorized as \u201cmade-for-Redbox\u201d and is barely worth dissecting, except that\u2026 Hammer is a landlord who quotes Nietzsche? He\u2019s attacking foreigners in the name of justice when he himself is a foreigner? When he\u2019s not killing immigrants, he\u2019s taking out his anger via rough sex in a brothel? Which happens to be located in a building he owns, and he gets distracted during sex by the mold on the walls? And we linger on this for quite a while? For good measure, the cinematography is constructed from a mix of drone-porn and the sickening yellow shade of wallpaper from Backrooms<\/a>, while the gunplay scenes are filmed like an episode of Campus PD \u2014 if the public safety officers drove armored vehicles and were fully militarized.<\/p>\n

In revisiting 1974\u2019s Death Wish \u2014 this film\u2019s spiritual predecessor \u2014 in light of the first Trump presidency, Greg Cwik noted<\/a> that the polarizing cult classic \u201cposits\u2026 unfettered fascist violence is the only thing that will Make America Great Again.\u201d Boll, still making reprehensible films well into the second Trump administration, ramps this ideology up seventeen notches in its conclusion, allowing Hammer\u2019s titular vigilante to execute an entire Muslim family in their living room \u2014 father, mother, son, and daughter \u2014 all under the pretense that their son was acquitted in a gang-rape case. Boll frames this act righteously through his choice of valiant public-domain music, not to mention Hammer\u2019s dialogue that essentially justifies his murdering the family since they all practice values from the Quran regarding women\u2019s dress expectations and therefore must have condoned their son\u2019s alleged criminal act. After all, as Hammer exclaims, practically foaming with anger, \u201cIf you think that women in America and Europe deserve to be raped because of a dress code, why did you come here?\u201d Not sure, Armie. You didn\u2019t let the family get a word in before you went trigger-happy on them.<\/p>\n

In Citizen Vigilante\u2019s final frames, in this bombastic, fetishized celebration of hate crimes, Boll leverages his immortal trollishness to meet the political moment where it is. He resurrects the cinematic legacy of the \u201cwealthy white man who guns down poor minorities, and who goes unpunished by the police\u201d (Cwik). And what better time to do so than right now, when the far Right is poised to glorify and weaponize this sort of message at every turn. More likely, however, this writer just spent an inordinate amount of time thinking critically about a monumentally repugnant piece of trash. Perhaps the joke\u2019s on him.<\/p>\n

DIRECTOR:\u00a0Uwe Boll;\u00a0\u00a0CAST:\u00a0Armie Hammer, Costas Mandylor, Neb Chupin, Vjekoslav Katusin;\u00a0\u00a0DISTRIBUTOR:\u00a0Quiver Distributor;\u00a0\u00a0IN THEATERS\/STREAMING: June 19;\u00a0\u00a0RUNTIME: 1 hr. 29 min.<\/p>\n


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