Almost, but not quite. 'Taken' is an actual movie with a coherent inciting action, rising action, conclusion, etc.
This was more like an angry letter to the editors that was just a middle finger drawn onto the page.
I'd watch 'Taken' again for fun on any lazy Sunday afternoon - I wouldn't recommend 'Citizen Vigilante' to anyone who wasn't already interested in it as an anthropological exhibit
Citizena1
1mo ago
“Citizen Vigilante" - some musings (omega-doxxing myself, hence the throwaway account)
I was 14 years old and bored on a Saturday afternoon at a friend’s house. We cajoled their older sibling into driving us and Shanghai’d a couple girls into a ‘date’ at the nearest movie theater.
Back in those days, one either called Mr. Moviefone for showtimes - please say the name of the movie you’d like to see, now - or just took pot luck when showing up.
And you really didn’t have to call Mr. Moviefone, because pot luck was always something great. For context, that year some of the top movies were: Spider Man 3, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter 5, The Bourne Ultimatum, 300, I am Legend, Night at the Museum, National Treasure 2, American Gangster, Blades of Glory, Superbad, Ocean’s Thirteen, Evan Almighty, Beowulf, 3:10 to Yuma, The Kingdom, No Country for Old Men, The Heartbreak Kid, Charlie Wilson’s War, Michael Clayton, Stardust, Children of Men, Zodiac…yadda yadda, left quite a few out.
But on this particular afternoon the terrifically memorable movie we took pot luck on was some generic fantasy action thing called ‘In the Name of the King’ by director Uwe Boll. I don’t remember anything really about the movie except it starred Jason Statham and at one point my friend nudged me and said ‘this sucks, should we just leave?’. My buddy's instincts were spot on as that movie somehow lost more than $50 million back when that was a lot of money and Mr. Boll won worst director of the year.
To this day it's the only movie I ever walked out of after paying for, other than a few years later when watching the 2010 Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, but that was only because the guy working the sound system had it turned up to ‘permanent hearing damage’ levels. More to that story, but for another time.
Anyway, the point being my only previous exposure to Uwe Boll was that his product was genuinely unwatchable. Coming back to the present, you can imagine my surprise in seeing his name attached over and over in reference to the hottest new piece of media to-the-right-of Rosa Luxemburg.
‘Citizen Vigilante’ starring Armie Hammer (yeah, that guy from ‘The Social Network’ who got MeToo’d) is (roughly) about an American who goes to Europe and conducts a highly restrained and well-planned vendetta against foreign gang rapists and their institutional enablers.
The film begins with an extended sequence of a pretty-but-harried mother and her six or so year old son shopping in a typical tiny European grocery store. The boy asks for chocolates and the mother indulgently relents, but when he asks for another treat she says he’s had enough. Her son helps pack up their purchases in their reusable bag while she makes small talk with the portly-but-friendly cashier. As they're walking home, a visibly foreign man stabs her in the neck, and she bleeds out while her son tries feebly to understand what just happened.
This isn’t meant to be a summary of the movie as you can get that anywhere, and anyway it is not that complicated. This is about the cultural implications. I’m gonna make a listicle so you can pick and choose any part you’re interested in discussing:
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The movie is passably watchable enough that Mr. Boll must have really learned from his many, many failures to put this together. There are too many Dutch angles, too many quick cuts, the chronology is a mess, the dialogue is wooden, the soundtrack is a crime, but altogether this is a solid 5/10. Although I’m really trying not to be ideologically biased, the acting was quite good (especially the rape victims, which is relevant if a bit morbid), a fair portion of the scenes held some real tension, the effects were up to par enough to not take you out of the story, and, there was a verisimilitude that’s sorely lacking in a lot of contemporary productions.
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The topic covered is absolutely explosive, en vogue, and has some pretty undeniable aspects. Regardless of the numbers of victims or perpetrators involved, there is a culture of sexual violence common to non-European countries that’s produced some shockingly poor results. Not just upon introduction, but also with what I will laconically describe as a cheeky bit of help from above along the way.
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There’s a recurring motif in the film of social media accounts actively encouraging the protagonist about his work that's been reflected in reality as some fairly mainstream voices have picked up the call. Jack Posobiec is hardly a hard-right figure and he’s been tweeting about it all day.
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The movie was ‘banned’ in Germany (the director’s home country) by being denied a rating so it therefore couldn’t be released. What do the kids call the ‘Streissand Effect’ these days?
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There’s a door opening here for more media like this. Sometimes righteous movements find odd champions, maybe the guy who is colloquially known as perhaps the worst director of all time just became one? If this is the only cultural response to “One Battle After Another” it’s already firmly in the ‘not bad’ category. But if it’s only the first?
Curious for your thoughts, any signal here or just noise?
In some ways it's quite an accomplishment, to have made a movie so remarkably bad that almost twenty years later we still have feelings about it
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