It Sure Is Interesting Who Decided to Help Promote the Armie Hammer Movie

The news cycle surrounding actor Armie Hammer has certainly been something to behold over the past few years. The star of The Social Network and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. made headlines in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual and emotional abuse, with specific allegations ranging from rape to branding women to potential cannibalism.

The allegations have impacted Hammer’s public image ever since, especially once the actor either left or was removed from basically every project he had lined up at the time. Hammer returned to the acting world last December in the little-known Western film Frontier Crucible — but it’s his newest leading role, Citizen Vigilante, that is catching a very specific kind of attention.

Citizen Vigilante is written, directed, and produced by Uwe Boll, who already has a decades-long reputation both for poorly-received B movies like BloodRayne and House of the Dead, and for publicity stunts like challenging movie critics to a 10-round boxing match. The film stars Hammer as Michael Sanders, an Army veteran who moonlights as the “Vigilante Citizen” of an unnamed European city. Under the guise of protecting rape victims, Sanders’ “vigilante justice” largely consists of attacking and murdering immigrants, who he believes are protected by the system.

Prior to its release, Citizen Vigilante had really only made headlines from its initial announcement: both because of the pairing of Hammer and Boll, and because the film was planning on being called The Dark Knight, until Warner Bros. issued a cease and desist preventing that. Even in the days immediately surrounding its June 19th release, the film was essentially a blip on the radar of the summer blockbuster season. At the time of this writing, it still only has a total of 16 reviews on the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, with a cumulative rating of only 6%. Slate‘s Rebecca Onion called the film “one of the most disturbing movies I’ve seen in recent memory”, while Variety‘s Todd Gilchrist referred to it as “astonishingly bad” and a “violent, incoherent, morally bankrupt slice of exploitation.”

Elon Musk Enters the Chat…

But the discourse began in earnest once Citizen Vigilante was denied an age certification rating in Boll’s home country in Germany, meaning that it could not be advertised or widely distributed in theaters there. The decision from the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (or FSK) was apparently made due to the film’s promotion of vigilantism, but Boll decried it as censorship over “the reality that mass migration from predominantly Muslim countries has severely damaged the security situation in Germany.” Boll subsequently told The Daily Telegraph that he was denied any sort of appeal after being told that the film “was inciting violence against migrants.” Despite all of this, Boll insisted to the outlet that he’s “not a Nazi.”

Once news of this decision began to gain traction online, it quickly became the newest talking point in the right-wing cultural war. On June 24th, Boll appeared on Real America’s Voice, the podcast of controversial right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec. Elon Musk then raised eyebrows on June 25th for (with Boll’s approval) posting the entirety of Citizen Vigilante on Twitter, allowing users to watch it for free within a 48-hour window. When explaining his decision, Musk turned the FSK’s rating into a free speech issue, arguing that it was creating a “Streisand effect” of more and more people wanting to see it.

The coverage around the film suddenly began to shift more positively, particularly from right-wing influencers. Patrick Bet-David referred to the film as “a must watch,” arguing that it “taps into the rage millions of people feel when their own government won’t protect them or their kids.” Libs of TikTok called it “the biggest F U to Germany and the open border globalists.” Tommy Robinson, who has previously been at the center of his own “vigilante justice” controversy, called on his followers to make the film “The Sound of Freedom of Europe.” Glenn Beck argued that the film “represents a MASSIVE cultural shift YOU need to be aware of.”

The coverage also shifted at some outlets as well. Giant Freakin Robot, which has its own lengthy history of problematic and right-leaning nerd coverage, provided one of the more forgiving reviews of the film (while still rating it only 1.5 stars). In their words, the film is “actually a blatant criticism of [the] very [anti-immigrant] mindset” that many have taken from it.

Newsweek has also run a number of exclusive quotes from Boll, and has been criticized for pitting the film against another recent release, DC Studios’ Supergirl. That film, which sees Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El fighting a group of pedophiles who kidnap and enslave young girls to “continue their all-male race”, already had to deal with its own right-wing smear campaign before that storyline was even publicly known. One could argue that putting Supergirl in the same sentence as Citizen Vigilante, amid that film’s new role as the right-wing darling, only stokes the nonsense even further. One of Boll’s newest soundbites about the film leans into this wholeheartedly, arguing in part that “the audience wants real films again—bold and with impact and about reality. The times of SUPERGIRL and all that c*** are over.” 

The New Sound of Freedom?

Citizen Vigilante has seemingly topped the rental and purchase charts on both Apple TV and Prime Video, although exact viewership numbers are a mystery at this time. Boll claimed on June 30th that the film had grossed “around” $600,000 USD against a $2 million production budget… a profitability margin that isn’t necessarily atypical of his films anyway. And Musk’s “Streisand Effect” was ultimately rendered moot earlier this week, after the FSK ultimately reversed their initial decision and re-classified Citizen Vigilante with an “18+” rating, meaning that it could now be shown in Germany.

Still, the proverbial damage is done, and Citizen Vigilante appears to have galvanized the Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and general distrust of the entertainment industry in certain right-wing spaces. (An argument could also be made that it has also stoked that base’s misogyny, between the way the film portrays its female assault victims and the Supergirl of it all.) Robinson is not the first or last to compare the film to 2023’s Sound of Freedom, which starred Jim Caviezel as a DHS agent who violently attempts to rescue trafficked children. That film was also not well received by critics, and was criticized for leaning heavily into harmful QAnon conspiracy theories, only to quickly and loudly be embraced by right-wing pundits.

Sound of Freedom‘s box office also became a bizarre talking point: a title card encouraged viewers to pay it forward by purchasing extra tickets so more people could see it for free. Outlets like The Daily Dot and The Guardian subsequently reported that supposedly “sold out” showings were actually empty, questioning how many people were actually watching the movie. (The same tactic is currently being used by Sound of Freedom‘s distributor, Angel Studios, on their 4th of July-themed release Young Washington.) Citizen Vigilante might not have the same exact circumstances, as the right-wing attention largely occurred after the film’s very limited theatrical run, and there doesn’t appear to be a significant “pay-it-forward” campaign to purchase streaming copies. Nevertheless, there are a lot of gross parallels of how the two films have been embraced by the alt-right.

Interestingly, a source close to Hammer told Puck News earlier this week that the actor is unhappy with the finished film. The reporting claims that Hammer views the project as “hateful” and “disgusting”, saying it is not what he initially signed on to make. Some have called that spin into question, especially when the centerpiece of the movie is Hammer’s character massacring an unarmed Muslim family, but it still adds another wrinkle to everything regardless.

(featured image: Event Film)

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