In 2016, notorious film director Uwe Boll announced his retirement from the movies, and for a while it seemed like it would stick. He settled into being a surprisingly successful restaurant owner and seemed comfortable with leaving directing behind. Still, as someone who had watched and reviewed 27 Boll movies and written over 48,000 words on the man’s oeuvre, I had my doubts. I even said in my review for the 2019 documentary about his career, “I also don’t think Boll will stick with his retirement. Much like Kevin Smith and Steven Soderbergh, other filmmakers who swore retirement, I think this period will be but a breath, a pause until Boll finds something that inspires him.” Well, it looks like what inspired him was making his own even-more-racist version of Death Wish. Originally titled The Dark Knight, until the lawyers got involved, Citizen Vigilante is Boll’s most prominent movie in nearly two decades. He’s actually injected himself into the culture wars and gained a whiff of relevancy that’s long eluded him. Citizen Vigilante is being hailed by rightwing audiences and pundits as “the movie woke Hollywood would never make.” Elon Musk posted the entire movie on Twitter, which is technically piracy. It became the number-one movie for digital platforms like Apple and Amazon. I’ve watched Citizen Vigilante and I can say with full confidence…welcome back to the Worst of the Year film lists, Uwe Boll. We’ve been saving a spot for you in your absence.

Michael Sanders (Armie Hammer) is an ex-Army officer living in “Europe.” Where in “Europe” you might ask? Unclear, though probably Germany. I raise this because the movie literally opens with a title card that just tells us we are in “Europe,” not a country or a city but the continent. In the opening minutes, we also see an immigrant stab a nice lady in the neck for no reason. The news informs us that immigrants and migrants have been coming to “Europe” and wreaking havoc, terrorizing God-fearing, tax-paying citizens with their foreign cultures, foreign languages, and depraved sensibilities. It’s in this setting that the people need a hero. It just so happens Michael stalks the streets of “Europe” as the Vigilante Citizen, finding those who have exploited the “European” systems of justice.

Let’s take three scenes that I think are emblematic of the thinking behind this whole endeavor as well as the impression of our problematic protagonist The first follows Michael as he heads to the hospital to talk with a survivor of rape and assault. However, on the way there, a trio of teenage hooligans board his bus and refuse to pay the fare, to the consternation of the beleaguered bus driver. Michael agrees to pay their fares and sits down beside them. He then lectures the trio of teens on macro-economics, explaining how their breaking the law and refusing to pay bus fare eventually contributes to a larger cost the rest of society has to pay. To no one’s surprise, the teens seem unimpressed, and later in the movie will be hilariously harassing one kid just sitting at a bench. These teen hooligan characters are so devoid of believability that they exist merely as an older generational boogeyman (“You can’t go out at this hour… there’s teens! And they have… attitude!”). Anyway, he ventures into the hospital and talks with the poor woman who was gang-raped and beaten. He asks her a series of questions about her attackers and says he’s there to seek justice. However, he purposely manipulates her by indicating the judicial process is slow and will require her to relive all of her trauma, and she doesn’t really want that, does she? Instead, he argues, he could provide his own justice on her behalf. To no surprise, she chooses the latter. Way to prey on this woman’s fears to be given permission to do what you really want to do, hurt bad people. Do you think he would have actually respected her choice if she chose to side with the court system? I doubt it. He might pretend to be serving unmet justice, but he’s looking for access to his blood-lust by any means.

Another telling moment is when he’s walking the halls of a brothel, which literally looks like a general office hallway. Granted, since we’re in “Europe,” who’s to say that there couldn’t be an entrepreneur making unorthodox use of their building space? Regardless, he propositions one woman ($15 for sex and $30 for more than one position). They go into her office/bedroom and have at it. Now, I thought Michael was patrolling this location because the women were victims of sex trafficking and he was going to free them from their terror. I wasn’t expecting him to merely partake, and partake he does, though at no point does Michael ask her to role play cannibalism. However, during sex, he is distracted because he sees mold spots on the ceiling. He explains to her that this is a hazard from too much moisture, as if she’s the one in charge of the upkeep of the dwellings. He then reveals he’s actually the landlord of the building and he came for a “surprise inspection.” He then tells her that he will, indeed, pay her the thirty-dollars and flips her over for some more sex (you better believe this guy is into choking). What a modern gentleman. Despite his “generosity,” Michael is more concerned about the building upkeep than these women, again, who could be suffering from trafficking and lacking agency or the choice to leave. I guess since it might not be some immigrant responsible for their torment he’s decided to overlook this possible oppression.

The last telling moment is when the police storm his apartment. Through a series of security cameras, he anticipates their imminent arrival and hides behind a metal shield with thin openings for two automatic rifles to stick their barrels out. He warns the armed officers that he understands they’re doing their duty but advises them to leave. They obviously do not. He then massacres them all from behind his shield wall, awkwardly handling each rifle with one arm, magically shooting every one of these officers. Then again these guys all stand in the open and do not move for cover, so maybe they weren’t the top of their class. They then send in more guys who also get massacred. Firstly, did these new guys not learn anything from the last batch of sacrificial offerings? Does nobody maybe just plan for a long-term siege and wait him out considering they know he’s stuck behind his little wall? The other telling aspect is that Michael shows no compulsion in killing these officers. He would say he warned them, but he also acknowledged they were doing their jobs, and for that he has declared they must die. So Mr. Law and Order doesn’t care so much about said law and order if it impedes his vigilante hobby. I would argue this fact should make the character less appealing to certain conservative audiences but after January 6th, perhaps taking their violent fantasies out on law enforcement when it stops them from doing whatever they want to do is their new definition of “backing the blue.”

As a whole, I think all of these scenes really paint a picture as to the character of Michael, the self-styled Vigilante Citizen, who says he’’s the protector of the people, but I think he’s really more just a guy who likes violence and finds flimsy moral justifications to enact it. Still, that could have been somewhat interesting to explore as a character study, but that’s not what Boll is interested in. This movie transforms completely in its final twenty minutes into a dehumanizing and racist diatribe (spoilers to follow). He tracks one of the rapists down and it happens to be a teenager from the Middle East. So Michael decides to hold the entire family hostage and blames them all. What did this kid’s teen sister have to do with this? Or his mom and dad? Mom says her culture has conditioned her to blame these scantily-dressed European women for any sex crimes brought against them, but then is she not also a victim of bad thinking? Is she so irredeemable in her perspective that she could not change her mind over time? Should she be sentenced to death for having bad thoughts? If you open that up, where do you even stop? Michael coaxes the kid to call his friends and tell them to come over so they can be executed one-by-one, but what verification is there in Michael’s alleged hunt for justice? He’s shooting people as they arrive, some of whom he never even sees their faces, so how can he verify these are the culprits? What if some guy just walked in? What if one of these guilty teens brought along an innocent friend? Who’s to say that the Middle Eastern kid even sent the message to the correct people. Ladies and gentlemen, this ugly incident of mass execution by way of racism is the movie’s climax. It made me feel not just bad but scathingly unclean, especially knowing some will pump their fists in celebration, point to the screen, and holler, “Damn right my dude!”

This is only the second movie for Hammer since 2022’s Death on the Nile, the last time he graced a Hollywood studio production. Boll is known for welcoming actors on the fringes and people Hollywood has turned a cold shoulder to, so it makes sense for him to swoop up Hammer. And you know what? He’s as convincing as this sort of character was ever going to be. Hammer still has screen presence, and even though this is schlocky genre nonsense, the man still brings something to the role. I want to respect that but I also find it hard to respect a role that is so blatantly xenophobic wish-fulfillment propaganda.

Considering the vile politics of Citizen Vigilante, and considering it literally ends with a dedication to the “thousands of murder and rape victims from immigrants,” it’s worth bringing up the question whether or not Boll believes any of the messages of his movie or if he’s merely pandering to people that do. Other critics have commented that Boll has had conservative leanings given some of his earlier films like Postal, and I must say, as the world’s leading expert on the cinematic offerings of one Dr. Boll, I disagree. Now, obviously I can’t look into the man’s heart and know what he truly feels about this subject, but now after watching 28 of the man’s movies, I feel like he’s at least a quirky neighbor that I’ve gotten to better know. This is the same man who made a movie about the genocide in Sudan (Attack on Darfur), the same man who lambasted the prison system for its abuses (Stoic), the same man who denounced the greedy fat cats of Wall Street (Assault on Wall Street), the same man who early in his career made a movie denouncing gun violence in schools (Heart of America), and the same man who crafted a nihilistic Vietnam War movie that condemned the very idea of war (Tunnel Rats), which still happens to be his best movie. Despite his recent output’s fascination with self-righteous spree killers (Rampage 1-3), I don’t think Boll really leans rightward. That brings up the alternative: this is a calculated grift aimed directly at racists. This I can believe, as Boll will chase after any audience that might provide him enough funding to move onto the next project and the next. Does that make the movie worse or does that make the movie a secret screed against this diseased way of thought? After all, the main character is a U.S. citizen living in “Europe,” making him… a violent and dangerous immigrant. I’m putting too much of my own thought into what is ultimately a thoughtlessly grimy vigilante thriller, but after 28 Uwe Boll movies, it’s hard not to pontificate. Unless you’ve been dying to see a certain selection of people die onscreen, steer clear of Citizen Vigilante at all costs.

Nate’s Grade: D-