I watched Citizen Vigilante with some friends. Here's how it went.
To no one's surprise, a notoriously bad filmmaker delivers another bad film.
Last week, me and a bunch of friends got together over Discord and watched the new Uwe Boll movie together.
I don’t think I need to introduce Uwe Boll to you, because you’ve probably heard about his work and his reputation as a notoriously awful filmmaker. Meanwhile, far-right figureheads have strangely started to embrace him, all because of a new film called Citizen Vigilante. I don’t think I really need to review the film, and I’m not publishing anything about it on Cinema from the Spectrum as he’s not worthy of that kind of platform, let alone a professionally written review. Instead, I’ll write down my circumstances while watching Citizen Vigilante, because frankly, that’s the only way I could have made myself watch a brand new movie directed by Uwe Boll.
This mostly stemmed from having floated the idea around with friends of mine, with whom we share a group chat. Clips from the film had been floating around on social media (namely on Twitter, where Elon Musk has promoted the film), and most of us got a good laugh out of how these moments were presented. Whether you’ve seen the clip of Armie Hammer’s Sanders massacring a Muslim family or gunning down officers who were sent after him, you already know the kind of audience that this movie is aiming for.
Thankfully, one of our participants, who was none other than Jared Gilman (yes, that same one from Moonrise Kingdom), posted some of these clips on Twitter for more of your amusement. I’ll link a few of them below, because I think that they are an indicator of the kind of movie you would watch, if you were to even watch this at all. Seriously, it’s not even worth it unless you’re in the right circumstances.
That’s one of many moments in here that will baffle anyone else. And I don’t think I need to write about how this is a badly made movie, especially while there are several video essays from people on YouTube who have done that for me. But when we were watching this, I can tell you right now: we were laughing our asses off. We were laughing especially because there’s a sense of desperation from Uwe Boll’s end to make Armie Hammer look like a complete badass, so soon after allegations of sexual abuse and cannibalism derailed his career in the beginning of the 2020s. Though maybe my first observation from watching this bit was simply this: when watching films like The Social Network or Call Me by Your Name, you know that he had potential. All for it to be spent on this.
Thankfully, the movie delivered on more of these than it did on actual action scenes. Most of us were talking over the movie, so it didn’t really matter to us what was going on. The few times we even quieted down to actually watch the movie, we were trying to make sense of all these random acts of violence happening in the movie, as if it supposedly justified our titular Citizen Vigilante. And Uwe Boll starts things off on a high note with a mother being murdered in broad daylight, blood gushers and all. Then the quick cutaway to a probably AI-generated Fox News-esque broadcast might have given us everything.
I don’t think it’s difficult to see why the far-right would latch so closely onto this movie, because it satisfies the kind of violence they wish to see in the real world. They wouldn’t care that this film is badly made, because as long as it says something that they agree with, they latch onto it. And it really feels like a perfect indicator for where their own media standards lie, as they live by the “go woke, go broke” mantra. It just made trying to watch the film on its own terms near impossible, especially if we were just going to treat it as a watch party movie over Discord to which I encouraged people to get drunk/high to.
It was really fun, though! It was fun because there were too many moments in the movie that are so baffling that made us laugh. One of the first that really made me laugh so hard was this:
I don’t think I know where to begin with this one. It’s one thing to show social media reactions pertaining to the titular vigilante that make him out to be a hero, but this one takes the cake. Why is an Instagram video that’s vertical being shown on a phone held in landscape mode?
Among other funny moments in the movie, there’s also this:
We had to rewind the movie a few times when this happened. When Jared caught the Wilhelm Scream, I thought he was lying. I didn’t hear it at first, but upon listening very closely, it stood out. It stands out because the sound effect has been reused so many times to the point it becomes funny. But it’s also just so funny watching the Wilhelm Scream included over a scene that’s in slow motion, but the scream plays normally. What sense does this make? I don’t know, especially given how much it hops all over the place.
You might also be one to say that we didn’t give this movie a fair shake, but I don’t think the right-wingers who have embraced this movie to the extent they have did either. So we decided it was best to watch this slop in this manner. Perhaps that feels like the best way to describe this movie: we knew we were watching slop, and we expected it. And we’re terming it “slop” because the kind of audience that Uwe Boll aimed for with this one, had decided it would be good without hesitation. They’re like pigs eating whatever you put into the trough, without questioning anything else.
I’m putting too much brainpower into talking about Uwe Boll, a director who has exactly none. If you watched the interview with him on Double Toasted, that perhaps proves whatever I’d already thought about Boll. Before this, the last movie of his that I’d watched was Postal, the work of an empty provocateur. The complete lack of coherence in his responses to Korey just speak towards how I don’t even think Boll knew what kind of movie he was making when he made Citizen Vigilante. Still, for what it’s worth, it gave us the idea how much of our minds we really owed him. I’ll link the interview here, because I think it’s a really great showcase for standing one’s ground while keeping things civilized.
For now, I think I’ll end by saying I’ve managed to define my legacy with being responsible for the first negative review Jared Gilman had ever written on Letterboxd. At the time of our watch party, we kept our Twitter accounts private in case some alt-right trolls would flood our mentions about how we’re what’s wrong with the “blindsided woke left” (an actual line from the movie). He’s since gone back to a public account; but I decided to keep my account private before I inevitably get dragged into another culture war surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
Still, I might as well share these screenshots, because we thought they were funny.
Oh yeah, and here’s the review I’m responsible for.
Thanks for reading!
This was typical of Uwe Boll’s output. Nice to meet you! I write about film and how decisions are made in the film industry. I subbed you