After decades of cinema showing people taking the law into their own hands when โthe systemโ fails them, thoughtful reckoning is warranted (if not necessary) about the costs and complex morality of vigilantism. A few films have tried this, but when one of the most popular comic book characters in the world is Batman, criticizing extrajudicial โheroismโ feels like tilting at windmills. However, Uwe Bollโs Citizen Vigilante, whose original title was somewhat ironically The Dark Knight, manages to be such an indulgent and uncurious portrait of a man seeking revenge that calling it wish fulfillment seems irresponsible.
Ball, a cinematic disgrace since the early 2000s, here delivers a brutal, incoherent, morally bankrupt piece of exploitation on the same quality level as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and BloodRain. In fact, the film is so astoundingly bad that it feels like the writer, director and producer is deliberately sabotaging his star Armie Hammer, whose supposed comeback this project could only hurt.
Hammer plays Sanders, an American living abroad in a country he says is overrun by criminal migrants. The title page says โEUROPEโ in all caps, but without further geographic context itโs hard to tell which accent actors are the good guys and which are the bad guys. Ball helpfully sets the record straight by opening the film with a scene in which a hooded black man murders a mother in front of her son in broad daylight and later depicts a confrontation in which the rapistโs parents insist they are teaching their son the values โโof the Koran.
Sandersโ identity remains a mystery, much to the consternation of Interpol chief Henry (Costas Mandylor). But he has become a viral sensation around the world, watching influencers sing his praises even as he doesnโt write watered-down manifestos about a legal system that protects criminals and re-traumatizes victims. Funding his acts of revenge through the rent he collects from the tenants of a network of properties inherited from his late father, Sanders controls his family business with the same precision with which he judges villains. But after a chance encounter at a bar owned by Sanders, Henry finds himself one step closer to catching this mysterious avenging angel, even if the locals are so supportive of his activities that they donโt seem to want him caught.
No matter how much one loves vigilante filmsโfrom genre standard-bearers like Dirty Harry, Taxi Driver and Rolling Thunder to any of the dozen action films starring Jason StathamโBoll makes it exceedingly difficult to philanthropize Citizen Vigilante, even if itโs the cheapest grindhouse fare. Itโs pointlessly non-linear and doesnโt really have any plot, except that Sanders must convince victims of violent crimes that his form of punishment will be more cathartic than what the legal system can provide, and then inflict it with as much firepower and brutality as possible. Ball seems to use every second of footage he recorded in a film (often multiple times) to expand its length into a feature-length film, as if he watched Hitchcockโs Vertigo and decided that watching the actors in every single moment of action somehow imbued it with a meaning that his script was so conspicuously missing.
Hammerโs character is equally xenophobic and is known as the broadest American stereotype, gnashing his teeth at foreign ghosts and brandishing a silenced pistol at supposed criminals while delivering smug monologues about the subsequent social consequences of crime. Even if the actorโs personal behavior made him virtually unfit to work in the US, Hammer was at least an accomplished and charismatic actor at the height of his career, and little of that spark is visible when he recites Ballโs biased articles. Meanwhile, Mandylor exudes a world-weariness that neither he nor Ball ever combine with any sense of urgency to catch a mysterious killer who leaves behind so much evidence โ from fingerprints to recorded videos of his thinly disguised face and voice โ that it seems harder No to find him.
After being legally prohibited from using the original DC-inspired title, one wonders why Ball chose such a bland, nondescript title when โThe Landlordโ was right there; Sanders is so dedicated to his duties as a property owner that he breaks off with a sex worker midway to scold her about the mold growing on the walls above her bed. Again, the flat, memorable pair of words chosen to replace The Dark Knight speaks to Ballโs originality and imagination as a director.
Closing with a dedication to โthe rape victims in Europe who were betrayed by our legal system,โ Citizen Vigilante is a film that hides its exploitation roots under the guise of exploring an important topic, even as it continues to treat that topic in a completely inappropriate manner. Between Ball and Hammer, itโs hard to see who would be worse off if he hitched his wagon to someone elseโs star. But any of the victims to whom it purports to pay tribute would be better off looking elsewhere for an advocate rather than mistaking this shameless exercise in ambulance-chasing for a genuine desire for justice.