Citizen Vigilante (film): It's getting a lot of attention but.....

netflixr (78)in #films • 16 hours ago

This movie has been making some serious rounds on all social media and it includes a Tweet by none other than Elon Musk promoting it. As far as I know this is available for free for almost anyone. I was seeing it promoted so often that I had to go and see what the hype was all about and after watching it I can say that the criticism about it being an objectively bad film is true but I also can understand why people would be so attracted to it given the current political situation in so many places in the world.

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Even if you haven't watched this one you probably already know what the general plot is: Extremely wealthy American Michael Sanders (Arnie Hammer) goes over to some place in Europe and decides to get vengeance for people who have been failed by the justice system. This involves the outright killing of a lot of people, many of whom are immigrants that many people in the world consider to be unwelcome and over-protected by the various governments of the world. There are plenty of real-world examples of this and supposedly the film is based on these real-world examples although the plot is entirely fictional by its own declaration.

Michael is seen as a savior of sorts as he goes viral (in the film) for conducting revenge killings on behalf of victims of crimes that the government has either under-punished or not punished at all.

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This film could be seen as a response to the way in which Netflix and other studios have taken real-world issues and then changed the race and nationality of the actual perpetrators to vilify white-people. I COULD be, I'm not saying that it is. However, it is undeniable that this is a big part of the reason why this poorly-made, low-budget film is gaining so much traction even though back in the days of "straight to DVD" that is exactly what this film would have managed.

The targets of his "street justice" are varied, including what appears to be some sort of European or Russian gangsters who shake down citizens for money, an immigrant family whose son and others raped a teenager and got off without jail time, a couple of guys at a bar who were in the process of putting date-rape drugs into some random girls' drinks, and some unruly teens on a bus that are refusing to pay the fare and harassing others on the bus.

I will admit that some of these scenes are very entertaining and it is not necessarily because of the race/ethnicity of the people being punished, but because of the fact that I think we have all been in public when someone was causing a disturbance, intimidating strangers for no real reason, or just being a nuisance without any repercussions.

This part of the film is entertaining and it isn't even a new thing. what is new, and what is controversial about this, is that it kind of mirrors the feelings of a lot of people in the world right now and how they feel the justice system that is in place has failed the public at large.

Now since this film can be regarded as a hot-topic as far a real-life current politics are concerned there is a rather predictable critical response to the movie and a massive disconnect between the "professional" and "audience" ratings.

The pros are giving it such low marks that it doesn't even register on the scale of 1-10 and the audience is giving it extremely undeserved high marks in response. Take this as you will: Is it frustration on the part of the public, is it "review bombing" in a positive sense which is so often the accusation? Well, the critical response is over the top on the negative sense because perhaps they feel as though it would be career suicide if they were to say something positive about this and the people watching it, the regular people if you will, are giving it 10/10 as a response to this. It's all so predictable and tiresome and this is a big part of the reason why most people don't pay much attention to sites like IMDB and RT anymore.... honestly, you shouldn't since nearly anything is rigged on there and this is how we end up with high marks for Rings of Power and 28 Years Later when both of those are just awful.

But the people giving this 10/10 are delusional as well. While it does have some good moments and IMO a very solid performance by Arnie Hammer, there are a lot of things about this film that are objectively bad.

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The special effects are clearly low budget and extremely fake looking most of the time and the one scene, which is depicted above was ripped directly from Leon / The Professional but is completely ludicrous in nature. They have SWAT uniforms on but their tactics and weapons are anything but special. They march into an obvious death trap one after the other even when seeing that the previous group that went in there just got wiped out. I guess the tactics of Special Weapons and Tactics is to just continue to do certain death procedures over and over again. It's really stupid.

There is also a decisive lack of continuity as far as the police are concerned because while the entire film is meant to take place in I think the UK or if not some other English-speaking country, the police vehicles and uniforms are in some other language.

The uniforms change back and forth from "Police" to "Policija" and many of the actors have accents that are decidedly not native-English-speaking. The film was made almost entirely in Croatia on a very low budget, so I guess they had to use whatever vehicles were available to them.

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_{I like the guys on the right of the frame who are in a "relaxed position" perhaps because of filming fatigue}

The indestructible nature of Michael Sanders is a bit far-fetched too. He seamlessly and rather effortlessly walks away from crime scenes without so much as mild interference by law enforcement or criminals. I don't mind the "Rambo mindset" but even in the most nutso Dwayne Johnson film there is some level of pushback that makes the hero's job look at least somewhat challenging.

Should I watch it?

Honestly, probably not unless you want to see what everyone is so worked up about. The absence of PC elements is refreshing and the fact that a director was willing to take on a project that was always going to be rejected by most professional communities is admirable but just because you do what other people are afraid to do does not a good movie make.

The gore and violence is appealing to people that like that sort of thing and especially to people like me that enjoy when directors get a little too optimistic about what they can actually do with the budget that they have. The clearly aimed high with very little money in this one and it is kind of amusing at times in regards to how bad it looks.

Overall, even with the hype and controversy surrounding this film it really is not a good film. People who say that it is are politically-minded and are promoting it because of that.

That being said I still enjoyed it, and so might you.