Already the most cursed movie of the year, Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante has somehow found a way to curl the monkey’s paw into an even tighter grip. With distributors understandably unwilling to release the anti-immigration murder fantasy starring the alleged cannibalistic fantasist and made by one of the worst directors in the world, none other than Elon Musk decided to get involved, uploading the entire movie to his X account for 48 hours.
Uwe Boll is best known for making a string of dire video game tie-in movies during the 00s, the likes of BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark and Far Cry. The German director, who possesses no discernible filmmaking skills, was instead extremely adept at exploiting tax loopholes in various European nations. In recent years, his name faded, but a grifter’s gotta grift, and Boll has reinvented himself as an alt-right advocate for freedom of speech for the canceled—which loosely translates to: someone who casts disgraced actors in trollingly controversial movies in order to get attention.
Citizen Vigilante is an especially revolting attempt at this, designed to be a sort of Death Wish for Nazis, in which a man (Armie Hammer) decides to murder as many immigrants as he can after the death of his wife, who is stabbed to death in the neck in a random attack. This assualt that takes place in the specific location of “EUROPE.” It’s astonishingly ineptly filmed, with no concept of eyelines, framing, or pacing, some truly hilarious lighting, and editing that oscillates between madly jarring rapid cuts and long, aimless, dreary scenes. You’d think after all these decades, Boll would have accidentally learned something about making movies, but he remains studiously incapable. It’s also egregiously racist.
So, given all these credentials, it of course becomes essential that it reaches as many eyes as possible. To not distribute a film like this is clearly an act of state-sponsored censorship, the complete shutting down of free speech, and I think we can all agree, tantamount to a war crime. So in swoops the hero of our time, Elon Musk to save the day.
Not liking this film is censorship
According to Variety, Musk contacted Boll via his podcast, but never spoke directly to Boll himself. When Variety asked the buffoonish director if Musk had permission to upload the entire film and allow people to download it for free for two full days, he replied, “Basically, yes.” So no then. Boll underlines this by then saying, “There is, of course, a good and a bad side of the X posting. The question you have to evaluate is: Is that bringing more money in the end, or is that costing me a lot of money? You know, you get a lot of PR, but you don’t get a lot of money. So, we will figure that out in the next four or six weeks.”
Following this stunt, U.S. distributor Quiver has now picked it up for other international territories, although not including the UK, nor Germany where it has already been refused a release. And yeah, with all the extra attention, it could pick up some more money on top of the paltry $600,000 Boll says the $2 million movie has made so far, from those who missed the chance to just download it free before it was even released. But more fool every one of them, because oh my goodness, it’s terrible and unbearably boring.
I cannot stress that the keyword is “boring.” From the opening titles to 40 minutes in, almost nothing of note occurs. There’s a painfully lengthy scene devoted to Hammer explaining to three teenagers on a bus the economic consequences of their not paying for tickets, and in the film’s most unintentionally hilarious moment, Hammer stops mid-sex with a prostitute to point out the mold on the walls, and details for her that this is caused by her letting clients use the shower without opening the window. I swear to god.
Hammer, of course, was not “cancelled” for some thoughtcrime or outburst of non-woke speech. Multiple women have alleged he emotionally and physically abused them, sharing what the accusers say are private messages from Hammer, containing some of the most disturbing sentences I’ve ever read. Much like the Daily Wire‘s deeply embarrassing casting of Jonathan Majors in its next ultra-racist soon-to-flop movie Run Hide Fight: Infidels, this sort of stuntcasting conflates so-called anti-woke kickback with giving work to awful, dangerous people.
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