I watched “Citizen Vigilante” last night. It is to good cinema what Barack Obama’s newly opened “museum” is to good architecture. It’s brutal, unsophisticated, poorly executed, but at least it’s short.
The movie’s antihero reads a script that is a combination of Q Anon and the Unabomber’s manifesto, solemnly declaring that everyone (?) is being used by mysterious puppet masters, that there is no justice unless we “fight back.” The people we ought to be fighting … killing, actually … are judges who are soft on crime, rapists, and immigrants. Or maybe even random folks who believe in driving on the right side of the road.
There are similarities between this movie and “One Battle After Another,” which I would say is even worse than this one. Armie Hammer is Sean Penn but without the stick up his ass and loose dentures. Sex in both movies is contrived, out of character, and irrelevant, inserted to attract a certain corner of the movie-watching audience.
“Citizen Vigilante” is banned in some European countries because authorities there believe it might persuade some unbalanced individuals to imitate the antihero and start shooting folks, immigrants certainly but also politicians, judges, and other members of the “establishment” who do nothing while bad people prey on the innocent. It’s not an unreasonable concern. Elon Musk, by making the movie available on X, may share some responsibility if acts of violence similar to those portrayed in the movie start to occur, or occur more frequently, in countries where protests and riots against unlimitted immigration are already occurring.
“Citizen Vigilante” is worth watching because of the historical significance of this moment, when popular resistance to immigration and incompetent governance has reached so high a level that elites tried to censor a mediocre movie about it. But if you want to watch good movies that explore the vigilante theme, rewatch Charles Bronson in the “Death Wish” movies or Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry” or the Spaghetti Westerns.
