You need only take a brief look at the comments beneath my review of Citizen Vigilante, an execrable piece of fascistic propaganda from notoriously provocative filmmaker Uwe Boll, to understand why he pitched a movie about anti-immigrant scaremongering. With the tax loopholes through which he funded his notoriously terrible video game movies now closed, the only way to get his subsequent efforts funded without any discernible talent is to base them around hot-button issues and pitch them squarely at a demographic famously incapable of detecting a grift as long as it validates their political views.
And it’s working! I can’t move on my various social media timelines without seeing the movie being shared in the usual circles, often with an accompanying screed about how it “captures the Zeitgeist of our current moment”, is the most powerful movie of the generation, and belongs in the pantheon of great vigilante movies alongside Death Wish and Taxi Driver. As hilarious as it is to see Uwe Boll – a man whose own Wikipedia page lists at least three of his movies being considered among the very worst of all time as his primary achievement – being held aloft as some kind of daring visionary, it’s mostly just sad to see how easily a not-insignificant audience can be preyed upon by the industry’s most determined conman.
Boll is already directly petitioning Elon Musk, the secular saint of ethnonationalism, to spread the word of the movie. He hasn’t yet, but I’m sure he will, since outside of launching rockets his primary intention now seems to be destabilising liberal democracy with misinformation. Boll’s already being aggressive with people who are discussing the movie online and insisting that they send him money via PayPal if they pirated it – even if the movie isn’t officially available in their country, and even if they’re openly expressing support for him. He’s using promises of a sequel to essentially crowdfund print and advertising.
None of this is surprising to people who have been aware of Boll through his illustrious career – in 30 years, not only has he never made a good movie, he hasn’t really made one even a little bit better than the previous, and has made several that are among the worst ever. He’s a specialist in targeting edgy subjects to drum up interest, shooting on the cheap in locations that provide tax breaks, and hiring semi-famous actors who can’t find regular work, usually on account of some scandal or other. This is doubtlessly why he hired Armie Hammer, a man blacklisted in Hollywood following multiple sexual misconduct allegations, including apparently his being a cannibal, as an avenging angel seeking extrajudicial justice for… female sexual abuse victims.
Boll capitalised on his notoriety in the mid-2000s by offering to have boxing matches with critics who disparaged him. He won the fights pretty handily, albeit after hand-picking the opponents. He has made multiple active shooter movies, recreated 9/11 from the perspective of the hijackers, and jumped on any trend he could find. Earlier in his career, his Rampage trilogy, which starred Dominic Purcell from Prison Break, dealt with vigilante violence through a much more anti-establishment, anti-corporate, socialist lens, his politics ever-shifting to suit the moment. This is why he has never had to make a good movie – he just has to make movies that reinforce the trenchant perspectives of the people watching them.
Hence, Citizen Vigilante, which targets legitimate concerns over lax immigration policy and the failings of European justice systems and uses them to actively encourage violence against immigrants in a totally incurious, thoughtless way. Hammer’s character is himself an immigrant, an American who is rampaging through a nameless European country – the implication being that it could be any of them – seeking justice for the victim of a gang rape, the perpetrators of which were wrongly acquitted. Nobody cares about this contradiction, though, even though the character claims to speak for “the people” of that nation; it isn’t difficult to imagine why.
The incitement to violence is not subtle. The character often speaks directly to the audience in video messages, imploring people to rise up and take matters into their own hands. The final scene is a literal call to arms. There’s a moment when the protagonist kills the entire family of one of the perpetrators, who are revealed to have covered up the crime because, essentially, the teachings of the Quran told them to. One of the relatives is guilty of a victim-blaming online post, a crime which doesn’t carry the death penalty, and for which many of the people now championing this movie considered evidence of fascism when people cheering on the burning of hotels housing asylum seekers were given custodial sentences.
And on and on it goes. Boll isn’t a talented enough writer or filmmaker to do complex subjects any justice, but it’s not like he’s trying to. There are legitimate failings in immigration policy across the world, and there have been heinous crimes committed by immigrants and often covered up by legislative bodies designed to enforce law and order. There are serious conversations to be had about these topics. But this movie isn’t going to provoke them. Instead, it’s stoking up the worst impulses of the kind of people who use political failings to justify innate prejudices; the kind of people who will overlook any legitimate flaws just so long as the content they consume validates their own views; the kind of people Uwe Boll knows will pay to support him.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t argue that Citizen Vigilante is based on a true story and tackles real social issues, but that the violence it promotes and justifies is merely fiction. You don’t get to decide where the facts end, and the wish-fulfilment fantasia begins. Either Boll has made a serious movie about a very real subject, and it should be critiqued as such, or he has made a terrible and unserious movie designed to appeal to people who will pay to have their politics validated. But it can’t be both. And I think we know which it is.
